Smallwood School / William Penn High School

Smallwood School

The Smallwood School was a segregated African American school, educating grades one through six. It was built in 1892 on West Pershing Avenue, was renovated in 1931, and ultimately closed in 1954 as a result of the Brown versus Board of Education Supreme Court decision that eliminated school segregation. 

All that remains on the site of Smallwood School is a Pennsylvania State Historical marker; a wooden table and bench from the school are on display in the York City School District offices on North Pershing Avenue in York.

Smallwood School was named after James Smallwood, a teacher and the first African American employee of the York City School District. Smallwood school had six classrooms, an assembly room, and a gymnasium. After its renovation in 1931, it had 284 students enrolled across the six grades. That averages to 47 students per classroom with one teacher. A day in the life of a Smallwood student would have been quite crowded. In the Pennsylvania Negro Business Directory, 1910: Industrial and Material Growth of Negroes of Pennsylvania, the authors praise the work of teachers and administrators such as Miss Ella J. Robinson, Miss. Mabel F. Robinson, and Miss Daisy A. Butler who, “brought the Smallwood Grammar School to the highest possible standard and year after year send many colored students to the High School.”

William Penn High School

The high school that the Smallwood students would have attended was the William Penn Senior High School located at 101 West College Avenue in York. William Penn High School, though racially integrated by the 1940s, was still a compelling indicator of the nature of race relations during the Jim Crow period into the 1940s and 50s, even in the Northern state of Pennsylvania. The original high school was built in 1927 and was demolished and rebuilt in 2006 using the original façade.

Unlike the Smallwood School, William Penn High School was integrated with a Black student population of about 4 percent as of 1949. A day in the life of an African American student at William Penn would have likely been isolated. There was little socializing between races, primarily because of segregation at the places high schoolers would socialize after school. One such business was Bury’s Famous Hamburger Restaurant, formerly located at 132 North George Street in York.

Bury’s Restaurant was a high school yearbook sponsor that refused to serve African American patrons. In 1941, Bury’s had made headlines when it refused to serve two Black members of Gene Krupa’s band; Gene Krupa was best known as the highly talented drummer for Benny Goodman’s famous orchestra. Krupa and his band had just finished a performance at the Valencia Ballroom and had walked to the adjacent Bury’s Restaurant. Upon entering, the restaurant staff indicated they would not serve the two Blacks in the group. Krupa, upon hearing the staff’s refusal to serve his companions, was outraged and flew into a tirade directed at the restaurant’s staff and ownership. A police officer stated that the incident was nearing the “rumpus” stage when he arrested Krupa for disorderly conduct. In an interview with the local York Gazette and Daily newspaper, Krupa stated, “when we get down south where they have ‘Jim Crow’ laws [we] expect these things, but not in Pennsylvania.” Even celebrities couldn’t sway the steadfast segregation that existed in York. 

York City School District, “Smallwood School,” Annual Report of the Public Schools 1930-1931

Pennsylvania Negro Business Directory, 1910, Compiled by Jas. H.W. Howard & Son (Harrisburg, PA: Jas. H.W. Howard & Son, 1910), https://hdl.handle.net/2027/emu.010000158356

Stephen Smith, “York H.S. became William Penn,” York Daily Record (York, PA), September 13, 2019

Voni B. Grimes, Bridging Troubled Waters (York, PA: Wolf Publishing, 2008)

York City School District, William Penn H.S. and Nan Mackey, eds., Wm Penn HS Yearbook, 1949

York Gazette and Daily, “Krupa Tells His Side of Episode at Restaurant,” November 29, 1941 https://www.newspapers.com/image/390080492/?terms=Krupa&match=1