Parker-Gray High School

Alexandria County · dedicated 2008 · Madison Street, between N. Fayette and N. West Streets

On this site stood Parker-Gray High School, the first high school for African American students in Alexandria. Before the school was built, African American students had to attend school in the District of Columbia. The noted civil rights attorney Charles Houston and other local activists persuaded the city of Alexandria to appropriate funds to build the school, and it opened in 1950. Because of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. the Board of Education decision, court-ordered desegregation began in 1959. The last class graduated from the high school in 1965. Parker-Gray closed in 1979 as a middle school. The Parker-Gray Historic District bears the school’s name.

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under a mile from where William Gabby lived in the 1760s

what this marker records spans 1777 to 1789, overlapping William Gabby's years here

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