M Street School and Omega

Many notables in Omega’s history were alumni of or taught at the M Street school in Washington, DC.  It is now known as Dunbar High School in honor of the poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar and has moved from its original location.  Founders Frank Coleman and Oscar J. Cooper graduated from M Street before attending Howard University.  Founder Ernest E. Just taught there as well as Dr. Carter G. Woodson.  Brothers Sterling Brown, Robert C. Weaver, Charles Drew, and many others were also alumni of M Street.

How did this small high school in Washington, DC come to produce and attract such scholarly talent?

Originally, it was the Preparatory High School for Colored Youth and later M Street High School.  It was founded in 1870 in the basement of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC.  It moved around the city until 1892, when it moved into a new building at 128 M Street, NW and was renamed M Street School.  It was the first public high school for African Americans in the United States and the first public high school for any student in the District of Columbia. Many of the teachers at the M Street School had doctoral degrees. They were teaching at the high school level because they could not get well paying, professional jobs anywhere else. The federal government paid black teachers in Washington the same as white teachers, making the faculty among the highest paid African Americans in the country. It had such a stellar faculty and academic reputation that many African American families from around the country sent their children to study at M Street. It became the most prestigious high school for African Americans in the nation.  It not only had courses in Latin and Greek but early in the 20th century its students out performed students at Washington's white high schools on standardized tests. The school was known as a college prep school, and a very high percentage of its graduates went on to college. It helped make Washington, DC, an educational and cultural capital.  The students who graduated from M Street went on to some of the most prestigious universities and became doctors, lawyers, writers, artists, statesmen, and many other successful professionals.

In 1916 it moved to another new building at First and N streets, NW, and was renamed Paul Laurence Dunbar High School. The original building was demolished in 1977 and a new school was constructed on New Jersey Avenue, NW Washington, DC.  

Pictured: Dunbar High School (1916-1977) in its original location on First Street, between N and O Streets NW.

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