Ware High School

Ware High School, founded in 1880 near this site, was the first public high school for African-Americans in Georgia and one of only five in the South during its operation. It was named for Edmund Asa Ware, a Freedmen`s Bureau officer and president of Atlanta University, and it closed in 1897. After its closure, African-American leaders brought federal suit in Cumming v. Board of Education of Richmond County, arguing that if the Black high school closed, the white high school must also close, based on the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law. The Board of Education argued that the available funds could educate more African-American children at the primary level. The case went to the Supreme Court of the United States, which had upheld segregation through Plessy v. Ferguson's separate but equal ruling in 1896, and the Court allowed the school's closing to stand, permitting segregation in education. In a series of cases beginning in 1913 and ending in 1954 with Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, separate but equal was displaced and school segregation was held invalid under the 14th Amendment.

Augusta-Richmond County consolidated government (balance), Georgia · United States