History
The school began in 1916 with 283 students. By the 1970s, the student population had grown to over 3,300, though the enrollment has decreased since then.
In 1934, 1,700 Morgan Park students went on strike, protesting the presence of African-Americans in school classes, leaving only 58 students in school. Parents had met with the school superintendent demanding that classes be kept segregated.
Eventually the strike was settled and the white students returned to the integrated school. Frank Sinatra visited the area to support integration during the strike and encourage the students return to the school.
Read more about this topic: Morgan Park High School
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History takes time.... History makes memory.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)