Coleman High School was a public

secondary school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' secondary education, lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) ...

in Pine Bluff,

Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the Osage ...

established in 1915. It served as a high school for black students until the public schools were integrated in 1971. It was a part of the

Watson Chapel School District Watson Chapel School District No. 24 (WCSD) is a public school district serving the communities of Pine Bluff (including Watson Chapel) and Sulphur Springs within Jefferson County, Arkansas, United States. Headquartered in Pine Bluff, Watson C ...

History

The school was founded as Hall School because it was founded in an abandoned dance hall on West Seventh Street in Pine Bluff. In 1915, C.P. Coleman, a graduate of the all-black

Rust College Rust College is a private historically black college in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Founded in 1866, it is the second-oldest private college in the state. Affiliated with the United Methodist Church, it is one of ten historically black colleges ...

Holly Springs, Mississippi Holly Springs is a city in, and the county seat of, Marshall County, Mississippi, United States, near the southern border of Tennessee. Near the Mississippi Delta, the area was developed by European Americans for cotton plantations and was dep ...

took the position of principal as well as the entire faculty, with a student body of 50. In 1950, the school had a faculty of 23, a student body of 900, and had moved to West 13th street. The campus included a $30,000 high school building as well as an elementary building and a home economics center. The school gymnasium was at that time the only gym for Negro children in the county. In 1951, a fireproof high school building and a science lab were added on an adjacent tract of land. On April 15, 1970 there was a shooting resulting in five injuries and one death.

District Court for Eastern District of Arkansas The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas (in case citations, E.D. Ark.) is a federal court in the Eighth Circuit (except for patent claims and claims against the U.S. government under the Tucker Act, which are appeale ...

judge

Oren Harris Oren Harris (December 20, 1903 – February 5, 1997) was a United States representative from Arkansas and a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas and the United States District Court ...

, in 1971, ordered the Watson Chapel School Board to desegregate schools. The former Coleman High School/Coleman Elementary School was to become a combined middle school while all high school students were to be moved to

Watson Chapel High School Watson Chapel High School is a comprehensive public high school in the Watson Chapel School District in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, that serves grades 10 through 12. It is one of three public high schools in Pine Bluff and the only high school managed ...

. As of 2016, Coleman Elementary occupies the campus. Earnest C. Smith, a guidance scientist who developed NASA's lunar rover, at one time taught mathematics at Coleman.

References

{{coord missing, Arkansas Schools in Pine Bluff, Arkansas Public high schools in Arkansas Historically black schools