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Roads to Diversity
Adams Morgan Heritage Trail
16 Building a Better Neighborhood
Across the street you can see the Marie H. Reed Community Learning Center. It opened in 1977 on the former sites of Morgan Community School and Happy Hollow Playground.
Both the Adams and Morgan elementary schools became "community schools" in the 1960s. Their curricula and policies were controlled by locally elected residents with the cooperation of the D.C. School Board. The schools also provided important social services. The new Reed Center followed suit with a public health clinic, child care center, adult education, and swimming pool. Its name honors Bishop Marie H. Reed (1915-1969), founder of Sacred Heart Spiritual Center and leader of the community school movement.
The original Morgan School was named after City Commissioner Thomas P. Morgan, whose Oak Lawn estate was on the site of today's Washington Hilton. At first Morgan School served white children. Then in 1929, when the John Quincy Adams School was built for them on 19th Street (Adams once owned land along Rock Creek), African American students were given the old Morgan School. By the 1950s, Washington's black schools were overcrowded and run down, while white schools were under-enrolled due to "white flight" to the suburbs.
When the Supreme Court ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional in 1954, Washington's schools were ordered to desegregate immediately as a model for the nation. Here, black and white community members had already laid the groundwork for better schools and improved race relations. In 1955 school officials and residents created the Adams Morgan Better Neighborhood Conference -- and the Adams Morgan name stuck. |