Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 20, 2008

The history of Baltimore City College began in 1839, when the city council of Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. passed a resolution mandating the creation of a male high school with a focus on English and classical literature. Baltimore City College was opened in the same year with 46 pupils under the direction of Nathan C. Brooks, a local educator and poet. In 1850, the council granted the school the authority to present its graduates with certificates of completion. An effort to expand that power and allow City College to confer Bachelor of Arts degrees began in 1865, but ended unsuccessfully in 1869. By the early 1900s, as the importance of higher education increased, the school's priorities shifted to preparing students for college. In 1927, the academic program was further changed, when City College divided its curriculum into two tracks: the standard college preparatory "B" course, and a more rigorous "A" course of study. In the 1950s, the school underwent demographic changes following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case. In September 1954, African-Americans entered City College for the first time and continued to increase as a proportion of the student population in the 1960s. The school saw further changes in the student population with the acceptance of women in 1978. (more...)

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