The history of the Chester-Upland School District is an unfortunate illustration of racial segregation in the United States. Chester’s public schools remained segregated de facto long after the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education. In response to Brown, the District’s desegregation plan allowed white students to transfer out of certain schools, but not Black students. Throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, the school district actively reproduced segregation by routinely redrawing school boundaries to match the changing racial composition of neighborhoods. Today, the Chester-Upland School District contains 6 schools and 2,723 students. The district’s minority enrollment is 100% and 63.8% of students are economically disadvantaged. The district has been in Financial Recovery Status with the Pennsylvania Department of Education since 2012 and is currently under Receivership.
As we will learn later in this tour, Chester residents have consistently fought against racial segregation of city schools and the ongoing legacies of racist policies, including the deplorable educational outcomes for its students.
The stories of the three schools featured here reflect the racial segregation of Chester’s educational system. The student body of these “neighborhood schools” was majority Black, drawing from families living in the majority-Black public housing developments nearby — the Ruth Bennett Homes and Lamokin Village.
Frederick Douglass Jr. High School
700 Central Avenue
Frederick Douglass Jr. High – from the 1932 Chester Times Yearbook
The Douglass School was the junior high school for Chester’s Black students. The building now houses the Frederick Douglass Christian School.
Booker T. Washington Elementary School
7th Street & Central Ave.
Booker T. Washington Elementary School – from oldchesterpa.com courtesy of Marie Constantini Larner
The Booker T. Washington School served Chester’s Black community. It opened in January 1924. and closed in June 2000 by the Chester-Upland Board. Prior to its demolition in 2006, the Washington School’s former students, educators and administrators came together at a Farewell to Booker T. Washington to share memories and take pictures in front of the building.
John Watts Elementary School
4th & Edwards
Watts School – historic photo from Alfonso Sanbe, online source
The school is named after Mr. John Watts, who was born a slave in Charlotte Hall, St. Mary’s County, Maryland in 1850. He was emancipated by the Civil War at the age of 18. Mr. Watts came to Chester in the early ‘1870s and opened a small green grocery store, in which he developed quite a lucrative business. He served with credit ads a Director of the Poor of Delaware County, was a school director in the borough of South Chester for twelve years and was also treasurer of the Board for one term. He was deeply interested in the establishment of the public school at Fourth and Edwards Streets in 1889, and it is eminently fitting that it should now bear a name. (Source: Keith Lockhart. 2018. The Names of Old Chester Schools. Delaware County Historic & Preservation Network).
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