For only two decades, Central High School stood as one of the most influential institutions in Mobile’s Black community, shaping generations of doctors, educators, artists, lawmen and civic leaders whose impact is still felt across the Port City today. Though the school closed its doors more than half a century ago, its legacy runs through the biographies of some of Mobile’s most distinguished post-World War II Black residents, including physician Albert Thomas, M.D.; artist and educator Dr. Joaquin Holloway Jr.; vocalist “Mother Julius” Spencer; educator Dr. Yvonne Kennedy; lawman Harold Johnson; former Mobile mayor and state representative Sam Jones; and longtime city chief of staff Al Stokes.
A New School Built for a Growing Community
Central High School opened in 1947 to serve Mobile’s expanding Black population, housed in the stately old Mobile Medical College building at the corner of St. Anthony and Lawrence streets. City school commissioners selected Dr. Benjamin Baker, then principal of Mobile County Training School, to lead the new institution. Baker, who was born in Mobile in 1901, held degrees from Tuskegee Institute and Atlanta University along with a doctorate from Paine College. Rev. Clinton Johnson, a Central graduate, remembered Baker as “a phenomenal principal” who “had control over the institution.”
Baker’s exacting standards extended to every corner of the school, at a time when Black schools across the South were routinely underfunded and often supplied with secondhand or substandard materials. When workmen once arrived at Central with a truckload of mismatched, cast-off chairs, Baker instructed them to load the furniture back onto the truck and leave, insisting the school would settle for nothing less than the best available.
Central welcomed its first class of more than 800 students with a modern science laboratory and a well-stocked library. Band students received new instruments and debuted new uniforms during the 1948 Carnival season, while the school’s chorus performed weekly on local radio and its sociology class toured the offices of a local daily newspaper. The opportunities paid off: Central quickly set a system-wide attendance record.
Growth, Achievement and a New Home on Davis Avenue
Just two years after opening, Central added a multi-use auditorium and gymnasium, built at a cost of $162,000, as enrollment continued to swell. That year, Central’s senior class alone accounted for more than half of all African American graduates in Mobile, spanning public, private and parochial schools citywide. The new building gave the school an impressive home court for basketball and volleyball teams developed under coach Jean Lowe, a former track-and-field standout at Tuskegee Institute, and a performance stage framed by thick velvet curtains that could seat 1,600 people on the gym floor. Baker praised the investment at the time, saying, “We will make better citizens at Central High because of this building.”
As enrollment kept climbing, Central expanded further, moving its band room, other music classes and study hall into a nearby church that had recently closed. In 1953, the Mobile County school board announced that Central would swap campuses with Paul Lawrence Dunbar Junior High, relocating to Dunbar’s larger campus along Davis Avenue, then the heart of Mobile’s Black business district.
That same year, Baker retired, and the school board named Whistler native J.T. Gaines as Central’s new principal. Though short in stature, Gaines proved just as commanding a presence in Central’s halls during his 18 years of service. “He was just a little old something,” one graduate recalled, “but when he spoke, everybody listened.” Through the relocation and change in leadership, Central’s teachers stayed focused on their students. Rev. Clinton Johnson, recalling his time at the school in a 2022 interview, said, “I remember having been exposed to caring teachers who, for some reason, had a desire to see you go, grow and achieve. I can still quote ‘Macbeth’ from what Ms. Pickney taught me in Central in her English class.”
Integration and the End of Central High
When Central first opened its doors, a rigid color line separated students throughout Mobile County, then one of the South’s largest school systems. The fight to dismantle that line began in earnest in the mid-1950s and proved complex, indirect and, at times, chaotic — a disruption to the local social order unmatched since the wartime industrialization of the previous decade. In September 1963, two Black students enrolled at the previously all-white Murphy High School, marking the start of a new era for Mobile’s public schools.
Seven years into the ensuing legal battle, U.S. District Judge Daniel Thomas issued a sweeping order in 1970 eliminating a “freedom of choice” enrollment plan for nine area schools and replacing it with strict attendance zones. The same order permanently closed Central High School, placing thousands of African American students into previously all-white schools and shuttering the Davis Avenue campus rather than sending white students there. State and county officials petitioned the court to reconsider, though their concern centered on Murphy High School and the “chaotic situation” they feared would result there — not on preserving Central.
For Central’s staff and alumni, the closure was a bitter loss. “They say it was progress and we have to accept that,” graduate Lula Mickles recalled. “It just seems so unfair that we had to lose our high school, and some folks didn’t have to lose anything.” As Mobile continued working through integration and the social change that followed, the halls that had once hummed with student life fell silent.
A Second Life at Bishop State
Large, vacant buildings often meet an unceremonious end. As paint peels and rooflines sag, communities frequently come to see more value in demolition than preservation. Less than a decade after Central closed, that fate nearly befell the building until a group of graduates and architects persuaded the Mobile City Commission to abandon plans to raze the structurally sound campus.
Even with that victory, it took more than 15 years for the campus to find new purpose. In April 1993, surrounded by fellow Central alumni, Bishop State Community College President Yvonne Kennedy — herself a 1962 Central graduate — announced the college’s purchase of the property along with a $7.5 million investment to renovate it. The building, renamed the Baker-Gaines campus in honor of Central’s two principals, now houses Bishop State’s nursing and allied health programs. “This represents a new hope and rebirth of the spirit this school once had,” one attendee at the announcement said.
At a later gathering of former Central teachers, Kennedy reflected on the school’s lasting reach. “Look around the city, the county and the state,” she said, “and you will see that the people you taught are not just participating in the parade. They are the drum majors and the drum majorettes” — an echo of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous 1968 call for Americans to become “drum majors” for justice, peace and righteousness.
A Spirit That Endures
A school, of course, is more than bricks and mortar. “We still have that old Central Spirit,” graduate Irma Coleman said in the late 1990s. Nearly six decades after Central closed its doors, that spirit remains visible in the lives of its alumni and the legacies they built as public servants, educators, business leaders and community figures throughout Mobile and beyond. Through the many ways they continue to give back, Central’s graduates carry forward the closing lines of their old school song: “Fervently thy guide us right, onward to our future bright, Alma Mater Central Dear, whether we are far or near, we love thee with all our might, thy Maroon & White.”