DC -- Dupont Circle -- Sumner School Museum and Archives (1201 17th St NW):
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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
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SUMNER_970806_01.JPG: Sumner School Museum & Archives
This building served as the first black high school in the country. It was erected in 1872. It is named after a white Senator, Charles Sumner. Sumner, an abolitionist, was nearly beaten to death on the floor of the US Senate by South Carolina Senator Preston Smith Brooks during a heated debate on slavery in 1856. Sumner had delivered a blistering speech against Andrew Butler from South Carolina and Brooks, Butler's nephew, caned him afterward. Sumner never fully recovered while Brooks returned home to a hero's welcome and gifts of additional canes.
Wikipedia Description: Charles Sumner School
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Charles Sumner School, established in 1872, was one of the earliest schools for African Americans in Washington, D.C. Named for the prominent abolitionist and United States Senator Charles Sumner, the school became the first teachers college for black citizens in the city and the headquarters of its segregated school system for African American students. It currently houses a small museum, a research room, art exhibits, and the archives of the District of Columbia Public Schools.
Construction and naming:
The Charles Sumner School was built on land that had previously been used as a school site by the Freedmen's Bureau, created after the Civil War to provide support for freed slaves. The school was named for Charles Sumner, a prominent abolitionist and United States Senator from Massachusetts who fought, among other things, for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and for the right of black citizens to use streetcars in that city. The building was designed by prominent Washington architect Adolf Cluss, a task for which he would receive a design award at the 1873 Vienna Exposition. The school opened in 1872.
Use as a school:
An Act of Congress in 1862 had required the creation of schools for black children in Washington, D.C. However, it was not until 1873 that the responsibility for administration of the schools was removed from federal agencies and placed in local hands. At that point, separate superintendents were appointed to administer the education of white and black children in the city. Charles Sumner School was one of the first schools in this new school system, housing elementary school classes as well as the high school that eventually became Dunbar High School, graduating its first high school students in 1877. That same year, the school was renamed the Myrtilla Miner Normal School and became the District's first teacher's college for African Americans. In addit ...More...
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I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
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2023_DC_Sumner_School: DC -- Dupont Circle -- Sumner School Museum and Archives (1201 17th St NW) (5 photos from 2023)
2022_DC_Sumner_School: DC -- Dupont Circle -- Sumner School Museum and Archives (1201 17th St NW) (14 photos from 2022)
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[Educational]
1997 photos: Since 1984, I've lived in Silver Spring, Maryland.
From 1981 to 2002, photos were taken using a Pentax ME Super camera.
From 1989 to 2002, I was doing all pictures as prints (instead of slides which I had grown up on).
In 1997, at the age of 40, my photo obsession began and I started taking thousands of photos per year.
In September, 2002, I switched to digital cameras and the number of photos exploded.
Trips this year: North Carolina (Dad), Florida (Mom), using a time share in Arkansas to visit Civil War sites in Missouri, Georgia, Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee. The Civil War became my excuse to see places I'd never been to in my life and it was a great motivator for 20 years or so.
Image quality for my pictures is variable because these are scans of slides and/or prints at varying quality/resolutions.The Great Pandemic Digitizing Project: When I was first setting up my website in August, 2000, I had decided to digitize some of my favorite pre-digital slides and prints. The scans were fairly low resolution but they were good enough. With COVID forcing me to stay indoors, I decided to rescan ALL of my pre-digital images from multiple sources (slides, prints, and negatives) at a much higher resolution and quality setting. (I digitized Dad's slides at the same time). Instead of replacing my original scans, I added the new scans to existing pages, figuring I'd select the best ones later. As a result, multiple versions of images appear on most of these early pages. At some point, I'll take the time to do a final review and get rid of the duplicates.
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