Recognized as an advanced elementary school design, the horizontally composed brick and glass school was built for African-American students in 1952. Numerous modernist schools were built for African Americans in the mid-20th century, when schools were still racially segregated. The complex of 1-story brick buildings with low-pitched roofs, large windows, and open corridors linking sections typified many modernist school designs promoted in the post-World War II era. It won an AIA National Honor Award in 1954. This school was part of a larger movement by architects to develop advanced school designs, as well as a political strategy—sometimes called “equalization” schools—in the South to provide good school buildings for black students in defense of the “separate but equal” concept that supported racial segregation in public schools.