In September 1939, hundreds of African-American students walked through the doors of East Suffolk High School for the first time.

W. Ross Boone is former president for the East Suffolk High School Alumni Association Inc. and a Class of 1961 graduate. “We had multiple elementary schools in various communities, but when it was time to go to high school, you came to East Suffolk,” Boone said.

East Suffolk High opened its doors between South Sixth and Seventh streets on Suffolk’s east side.

It was built at the site of East Suffolk Elementary School, a one-story Colonial Revival brick building with a central auditorium flanked by classrooms and built in 1926, according to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

Both were part of the thousands of Rosenwald Schools that were built across the country to primarily serve black students. They were part of a partnership between former president of Sears, Roebuck and Company Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

But while the Rosenwald Fund contributed seed money for the school, the bulk of the fundraising was done by local donors in the Suffolk community, Boone said.

“It was a community-based effort to actually get the school under way,” he said.

The school was overseen for all of its 26 years of operation by the school’s one and only principal, William Turner. Boone described Turner as a stern man who accepted nothing but the best from his students, but who would also fight for whatever they or faculty needed.

“If there was something that needed to be done, he got it done,” he said.

That included pulling double-duty as a teacher. Turner had a staff of just three teachers, and because of that he taught U.S. government classes at the school. He had a homeroom of 19 students, according to eastsuffolkalumniassociation.com.

Thelma Hamilton came to teach out of the school fresh out of Virginia State College with a Bachelor of Science in home economics. She taught biology and home economics to both girls and boys and had a homeroom of 59 students.

She also organized the school’s first girls’ basketball team.

“Some of her boys called themselves ‘Tough Guys,’ but somehow she won their confidence,” according to the alumni website.

Boone recalled making the best of “hand-me-down” books and lab equipment that was worn and dated. But each student still had the chance to be just as competitive as any other graduate nationwide, thanks to outstanding teachers like Turner and Hamilton.

“We didn’t necessarily have the best equipment, we didn’t necessarily have the best books, but we had the best teachers,” he said.

More than that, each teacher at East Suffolk High lived in the same community as their students. Boone could count four teachers that lived within four houses of where he grew up.

“Teachers were revered because they were people in the community that helped you become the best person that you could be,” he said.

The school grew along with its student body. The gymnasium was built in 1951. Two wooden structures were built for home economics and the custodian that lived on the property, Boone said. A cafeteria was added so that students could be served hot meals.

The 1954 Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education decision put an end to racial segregation in American schools and started the slow end of East Suffolk High. Its final class graduated in 1965, and its campus was converted into East Suffolk Elementary School in 1966, until it too closed in 1979.

The East Suffolk School Complex now exists as the East Suffolk Recreation Center and the Parks and Recreation administrative offices, with memorabilia from those school days still displayed proudly.

The complex made the National Register of Historic Places in 2003 as a well-deserved distinction for such a critical landmark in the history of Nansemond County and the city of Suffolk, Boone said.

“It represented the county’s effort — and later the city’s effort — to identify and clearly align with the continuing educating of people of color in this community,” he said.