Howard High School of Technology, formerly Howard High School, is now a vocational-technical high school in Wilmington, Delaware. When becoming a vo-tech school, the school was named Howard Career Center. The school became Howard High School of Technology in 1994, to return to the original school name. Before becoming a vo-tech school, it was an all-black school, subject of Gebhart v. Belton, a 1953 desegregation court case. Parents of students bussed to Howard sued to allow admittance to all-white Claymont High School. Upon appeal to the U.S. Supreme court, it combined with four other cases, and thus was one of five schools subject of the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education U.S. supreme court case. The Howard case was the only one that had resulted in an order of desegregation at the state level. The Supreme Court ruling overturned "separate but equal" doctrine and ordered desegregation in all of the cases. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2005.[1],[2]
Howard High School was named after Oliver Otis Howard (November 8, 1830 ? October 26, 1909) a career United States Army officer and a Union general in the American Civil War. He was a corps commander noted for suffering two humiliating defeats, at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, but he recovered from the setbacks while posted in the Western Theater, and served there successfully as a corps and army commander.