Adamson, W.H., High School

About this property

William Hardin Adamson High School, formerly Oak Cliff High School, is a public secondary school located in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas, Texas, United States. It is part of the Dallas Independent School District and is classified as a 5A school by the UIL. In 2015, the school was rated "Met Standard" by the Texas Education Agency. In 1891 the newly-incorporated Town of Oak Cliff voted to seek bids on a school building. The newspaper reported: "Resolved by the city council of Oak Cliff that the mayor be instructed to advertise for plans for a modern three-story brick school building with brick cross walls [sic] to be erected at Oak Cliff, Texas, to contain twelve rooms for school purposes and the cost of said building, complete, not to exceed the sum of $22,000,…" The cornerstone was laid at the corner of Patton and Tenth streets for the school in September, 1892 under the auspices of the Masonic grand lodge of Texas. In 1891 William Hardin Adamson was named superintendent and Oak Cliff Central School operated at that location until a new building was constructed to house the high school in 1915 at the corner of Ninth and Beckley. The old building was then operated as an elementary school until 1926 when it was torn down and the students assigned to John H. Reagan and James Bowie schools and later to the new Ruthmeade School (now John F. Peeler). The lot at 201 East Ninth Street has been the site of a Dallas high school facility since 1915. The school is named for William Hardin Adamson, who became superintendent of the Oak Cliff School District shortly after moving to Oak Cliff in 1901. In the decade after the City of Dallas annexed the Town of Oak Cliff and merged school districts, the Dallas ISD built Oak Cliff High School to relieve crowding at Dallas High School, built just 8 years prior. Adamson was named principal of the new school. He served as principal until 1934 and died a year later on 26 May 1935 at age 71. A week after his death, the school system renamed Oak Cliff High School after Adamson. The 1924 Oak Cliff High School football team won the state championship, one of only two DISD high schools to win a state football title (Sunset, in 1950 with the now-discontinued "City" championship, is the other). Carter High School was forced to forfeit its 1988 Class AAAAA title, so its state championship no longer counted. Overcrowding problems at Oak Cliff High School were relieved by the 1925 opening of Sunset High School. Adamson High School was one of six high schools for white students in Dallas in the 1930s and 1940s; the only other high school in Oak Cliff was Sunset High School, which was located about 19 blocks from Adamson High. Black students in the Oak Cliff area were not permitted to attend Adamson or Sunset and were forced to commute to Booker T. Washington, Lincoln, or James Madison High Schools until Franklin D. Roosevelt High School was opened in 1963.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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