inspiring workers to toil among the lowly in
West Virginia. The Negro schools could then be turned over to teachers
of the race who, having availed themselves of the opportunities for
education, had become equipped for service among their own people.
With the further organization of the public school system of
Parkersburg, the Negro school was brought under the direction of the
local superintendent of schools and given the same sort of instruction
and inspection as that provided for the white schools. In the course
of time the work developed from a primary into an intermediate and
then into a grammar school.

Parkersburg is unique again, moreover, in having the first high school
for Negroes in the State. This advanced phase of public school work
was added in 1885, and the first class was graduated in 1887. For a
number of years the Negro schools were housed in a frame building of
two rooms, which was somewhat enlarged in 1883. This, moreover, has
been followed by the erection of a brick structure with the modern
conveniences for public schools, facilitating especially high school
instruction, which under former conditions was handicapped. A new
building known as the Sumner High School was constructed there in
1886, and A. W. Pegues, a graduate of the Richmond Institute, was made
its first principal. He showed himself a studious man of intellectual
bearing, but after serving in Parkersburg one year he resigned to
accept a chair in Shaw University in North Carolina. He has since been
made the head of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum of that State.[9]

Following Professor Pegues came T. D. Scott, who served in this high
school five years, reorganizing the work and enlarging the curriculum.
When he resigned in 1892 he became an instructor in natural science at
Wilberforce University, of which he was an alumnus. Carter Harrison
Barnett, a graduate of Dennison University, became principal in 1892
and served one year. Then came John Rupert Jefferson, who took charge
of the institution in 1893, a position which he has successfully
filled until the present time with the exception of one year when he
was supplanted by Mr. B. S. Jackson, an alumnus of Howard University,
who at the close of his first year's service gave way to Mr.
Jefferson.[10]

Clarksburg followed in the wake of Parkersburg and soon bestirred
itself in the direction of the education of Negro youth. The first
school was established there in 1867, with an enrolment of