During the Civil Rights Movement, the high school's integration was featured in a documentary film that was nominated for an Academy Award.

It also had several notable alumni, including more than a dozen Major League Baseball or NFL players, and a variety of political and education leaders.

In 1944 alone, the school's baseball team had five players who went on to the Major Leagues: Earl Weaver, Roy Sievers, Jim Goodwin, Bob Wiesler and Bobby Hofman.

[12] After Beaumont was racially integrated in September 1954, a knife fight broke out in the school between African American and white students that led to coverage in Jet magazine.

[13] Following the incidents, a short documentary film titled A City Decides reenacted the events of integration at the school and portrayed the reaction of teachers to student racial conflict.

[14] The film was directed by Charles Guggenheim and aired on NBC affiliates, and in 1956 it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject.

[17] The skits included profanity and depicted an attack on a white teacher who had made racially derogatory remarks, and students were urged to resort to violence.

[17] The early end to the week's celebration led to an incident in which 20 students damaged school property and assaulted two police officers.

[17] Even after a court mandated desegregation transfer program, Beaumont remained a de facto segregated all-black school from the 1980s through the 2000s.

[29][30] The renovations significantly improved conditions at the school, with new lockers, flooring, ceilings, and furniture, while both the swimming pool and auditorium were restored.

[38] The JROTC program was designed to both reduce the dropout rate at Beaumont and combat the problem of gang activity at the school.

[39] Under Crues, Beaumont's discipline problems decreased, and he received comparisons to New Jersey high school principal Joe Clark, the inspiration for the 1989 film Lean on Me.

[43] Starting in the 1970s, academic problems began to surface at Beaumont High School; one student who graduated in 1974 found after testing that she was able to read at only a third grade level.

[45] According to an internal report from the St. Louis Public Schools, only 26.1 percent of Beaumont students who entered in September 1984 graduated in June 1988.

"[49] However, advanced mathematics courses such as calculus were not offered at Beaumont due to lack of student readiness, the drama club was cancelled, and the computer-aided reading program had no computers.

[50] However, Beaumont lacked both an orchestra and a drama program, and only after inquiries from local media was a band director hired to replace one who had quit three months earlier.

[52] By 1998, Beaumont was regarded as a "turnaround" due to the efforts of Crues, who further instituted zero tolerance policies on gang activity at the school.

[54] Some part of the academic progress was credited to the principal, Floyd Crues, who created a school-within-a-school at Beaumont to teach students about banking and finance.

[55] In January 1999, Monica Washington, a Beaumont senior, presented research at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

[62] Security gains remained tenuous, however, as in September 2003, after a significant fight at the school, a student being treated for injuries was discovered with a loaded gun.

[68] Later steps taken to curb discipline incidents at the school included the formation of the Young Gentlemen's Club in 2007, in which male students wore ties and attempted to improve their etiquette.

[70] The article described the building as "loom[ing] over the troubled neighborhood like a castle of trapdoors and passageways", although it also emphasized the positive role of Brown and other administrators in encouraging academics and discipline at the school.

[74] The school song was as follows:[76] Beaumont High, we pledge our loveLet our chorus ring aboveBeaumont's warm and friendly wallsCampus broad and ample hallsPay we now the honor dueTo Beaumont's Gold and BlueThe Gold of YouthThe Blue of Truthand staunch Loyalty.Seventy seniors graduated on May 14, 2014, as the final class of the 88-year-old institution.