Named after abolitionist Frederick Douglass, the school served the area of North Webster, which had been settled by many black families after the Civil War.

The School District of Webster Groves took over this responsibility in 1868, a time when there were 30 black children in the area.

This arrangement was affirmed in 1918, when the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that education should be "separate but equal".

Eventually a second library was established in the 1930s in North Webster, accessible to the black families there.

In 1954, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, all high schools were integrated.