By Bill Bowden, Arkansas Democrat Gazette

July 6, 2025 – The building that houses Dunbar Magnet Middle School in Little Rock was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 as being significant within the state of Arkansas.

But its significance is national, according to proponents of an effort to submit a new nomination to the National Register.

“We need to make sure that it has the right status,” said Angel Burt, executive director of the Dunbar Historic Neighborhood Association. “It’s important for the school to receive the recognition that it deserves. It’s about reclaiming and elevating a legacy of excellence. Dunbar was a national model of Black education and pride.”

Also, being listed as nationally significant could help the Little Rock School District get grants for the restoration of Dunbar.

Completed in 1929, the building was known as Dunbar Junior and Senior High School and Junior College when it was added to the National Register in 1980.

But, as most things nearing 100 years old, it could use some improvements.

Burt came up with the idea to name the school’s auditorium for the composer Florence Price, who grew up in the area and returned to perform a concert in the auditorium in 1934.

Linda Young, director of grants for the school district, began looking for grants to help pay for a new sound system for the auditorium. Then she noticed that, to apply for a Save America’s Treasures grant from the National Park Service, Dunbar would have to be listed as nationally significant on the National Register of Historic Places.

It wasn’t. The state preservation officer in 1980 only checked the box indicating state significance.

Young and Burt then began working on an effort to change the National Register listing, as did Patricia Blick — who was then executive director of the Quapaw Quarter Association — and Hannah Ratzlaff, planning manager for the city of Little Rock.

With help from a $17,700 Underrepresented Communities grant from the National Park Service, a consultant was hired — Angie Clifton Thiel of Linden, Tenn. — and a proposed nomination was drafted.

The Little Rock Historic District Commission will consider the new nomination at its meeting on Monday.

The nomination is also scheduled to be heard on Dec. 3 by the State Review Board meeting at the Division of Arkansas Heritage headquarters in Little Rock.

“This update elevates the property’s significance to the national level … for its contributions to education and law, highlighting its role as the first of three Rosenwald urban industrial trade schools with a junior college, its association with the landmark Morris v. Williams (1942–1945) equal-pay case for Black teachers, and its connection to the Little Rock Nine and the 1957 Central High desegregation crisis,” according to the new nomination.

Seven of the Little Rock Nine — and possibly all nine of them — attended Dunbar Junior High School before going on to integrate Little Rock Central High School, according to the nomination.

Sue Cowan Williams, an English teacher at Dunbar, was the primary plaintiff in the civil rights case Morris v. Williams.

According to information in Monday’s meeting packet, Dunbar was the sole Black high school in Little Rock from 1929 to 1955 and served as a cultural and educational cornerstone for Little Rock’s Black community.

“In 1927, Little Rock High School — now Little Rock Central High School — was just completed for white students at a cost of $1.5 million,” according to the project website. “The existing high school for African American students in Little Rock — M.W. Gibbs High School — was deteriorating and could not accommodate the community’s growing needs. To fund a new school for African Americans, School Board member and Little Rock lawyer G. DeMatt Henderson Sr. traveled to Chicago at his own expense to secure funding from Sears, Roebuck & Co. executive and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald.”

Dunbar was constructed at a cost of $421,791, according to the updated nomination form. That would be about $8 million today, adjusted for inflation.

The school was completed in 1929 as the Negro School of Industrial Arts, providing labor-force skills as an industrial school, according to the website.

Dunbar was designed by the same local architects who designed Central High School — George H. Wittenberg and Lawson L. Delony of the Wittenberg & Delony Architects Firm of Little Rock.

The school was designed to accommodate both academic and vocational programs. When completed, the building included 34 classrooms, science labs, a library, an auditorium and seven industrial shops.

“Local African American community leaders and teachers wanted a school that would prepare African American students for college,” according to the project website. “In response, a classical curriculum was secured to prepare youth for college and the school was renamed the Paul Laurence Dunbar High School.”

Dunbar was a Black poet.

The school accommodated grades seven through 12 and had a wing dedicated for Dunbar Junior College, a two-year program with emphasis on teacher training.

The school continued to operate in those capacities until the mid-1950s, when the junior college shut down and Dunbar became solely a junior high school in light of the completion of the new Horace Mann High School, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.

CORRECTION: Angel Burt, executive director of the Dunbar Historic Neighborhood Association, came up with the idea to name the Dunbar Magnet Middle auditorium for the composer Florence Price, who grew up in the area and returned to perform a concert in the auditorium in 1934. Burt’s involvement with the auditorium was incorrectly reported in a previous version of this article.