In the early 1900s, as African Americans moved from the rural South to Jenkins and other coal towns for work in the mines, separate schools were built in Burdine, Jenkins, Dunham, and McRoberts to segregate black children from white students, but these schools only taught through seventh grade, forcing those seeking a high school education to relocate and board at personal expense. After a Kentucky law required school districts to provide twelve grades of segregated schooling for both races, the Jenkins School System began establishing a high school for black students, with Letcher County contributing state funds for the extended education of the county's black children. The resulting school became the only high school in Letcher County for black students, serving students from Jenkins, McRoberts, Fleming, and Haymond, and the first ninth grade class was added at the existing Jenkins Grade School in 1931. In July 1938, the school board chose land near the Jenkins Colored School in Jenkins #4 Hollow, owned by Saint George Catholic Church, as a school site, and in November 1938 requested that Consolidation Coal Company add at least four rooms to the Jenkins Colored School. In 1942, after the Consolidation Coal Preparation Plant was built near the Dunham Graded School and its noise led to that school's closure, students were moved to the Jenkins Colored School, and local residents recalled that the renovated building in Jenkins then became known as Dunham High School. Dunham High School closed in 1964, ten years after Brown vs. Board of Education declared racial segregation of children in public schools unconstitutional, and in 1965 the building became Jenkins Junior High School until fire destroyed it in 1969.