Jack Yates High School

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Jack Yates Senior High School is a secondary school located at 3703 Sampson, very near Texas Southern University, in the Third Ward in Houston, Texas, United States. Yates High School handles grades nine through twelve and is part of the Houston Independent School District (HISD).Yates was named after Reverend John Henry "Jack" Yates, a former slave and a minister. Jack Yates and other leading blacks established the Houston Baptist Academy. Within a decade, the success of the school prompted Reverend Yates to reorganize the Houston Baptist Academy as the Houston College, the school offered a special opportunity to the black children of the community who sought an alternative to the Colored High School of the public school system.Yates has HISD's magnet program for communications: broadcast TV, radio, print, and photography. Yates also houses a maritime studies magnet program.Paul Knight of the Houston Press wrote that "the school remains a symbol of solidarity in the Third Ward."In June 2016, members of the Jack Yates and HISD communities held a ground-breaking ceremony for the new state-of-the-art campus. A $59.4 million new campus will be completed next to the old campus in Summer 2018.HistoryPre-desegregationYates was established on February 8, 1926, as Yates Colored High School with 17 teachers and 600 students. The school, at 2610 Elgin, was the second school for African-Americans established in Houston.