Alva C. Clayton

Principal 1875-1879

(1972 Maroon and White)

Mr. Alva C. Clayton was selected to be Principal of the Sumner High School when it was established in September of 1875.  Until that time he had served the St. Louis Public Schools as Principal of District No. 3.  The first location of the Sumner High School was in a school building at Eleventh and Spruce Streets. Mr. Clayton was given the task of selecting a faculty consisting white entirely of white persons who were to educate on the secondary level a student body consisting of Negroes.  There was no pattern that would be followed since this was in all probability the first attempt at education for Negroes on the Secondary Level in this country.  There was no special curriculum, nor substandard performance allowed.  The same qualifications for graduation with special emphasis on courses in English, Latin, Mathematics, History and the Natural Sciences were required.  To go to high school in 1875, just ten years after the Civil War, at a time when most Negroes in this country didn’t even go to school demanded much rigor and stamina.

Events show that under Mr. Clayton’s leadership a faculty dedicated to the education of these young Negro students worked zealously at their task.  The Sumner High School and its students were well respected in the community. The school greatly influenced and broadened the outlook of the students who were enrolled.

In 1879 Mr. Clayton resigned from the St. Louis Public Schools to accept the principalship of Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City, Missouri in the first year of financing by the General Assembly of Missouri, therefore as a fore-runner of modern Lincoln University in the state university system.

As Mr. Clayton left the administration at Sumner High School, where he had greatly influenced the course of study for high school graduation and later as he left Lincoln Institute, he signified the end of an era.  The community interest and support of secondary education and higher education had reached the point that both Negro teachers and administrators were qualified, available, and employed to administer instruction to Negro students.  It is interesting to observe in its historic perspective that the Board of Education of the City of St. Louis which had pioneered in establishing the first kindergarten in the nation and the first high school west of the Mississippi would have chosen to establish education on the secondary level to Negroes before the rest of the nation.  This foresight was to permeate education in St. Louis for many decades to come.