[1] It replaced two earlier all-black high schools, the first founded in 1927.

From that time until integration, there was only one high school for blacks in all of Montgomery County, Maryland.

Built partly with money from the Julius Rosenwald Fund, the two-classroom building stood next to the two-room Rockville Colored Elementary School.

The county did not initially provide transportation so parents and the black community pooled resources to buy a used bus.

In 1936, represented by Thurgood Marshall, Rockville Colored Elementary School principal William B. Gibbs Jr. sued the Montgomery County School Board over its practice of paying white teachers nearly double what black ones earned.