It was founded in 1901 to serve the then-independent community of Ensley, which was centered on major plants operated by U.S. Steel and the American Cast Iron Pipe Company.
In 1936 more than a hundred students at Ensley High School contracted food poisoning which was traced to profiteroles (cream puffs) purchased from a local bakery.
The Jefferson County Department of Health, which had been unable to maintain their inspections program during the Depression, found conditions at the bakery to be "filthy".
Nevertheless, persistent racial segregation in the Birmingham area, especially after the loss of Ensley's major industries, made it so that the student body had become overwhelmingly African American by the mid-1970s.
He was fired from his coaching job and sued under Title IX, 1972 federal legislation that requires non-discrimination in publicly funded education programs.