In 1891 the newly-incorporated Town of Oak Cliff voted to seek bids on a school building. The newspaper reported: "Resolved by the city council of Oak Cliff that the mayor be instructed to advertise for plans for a modern three-story brick school building with brick cross walls [sic] to be erected at Oak Cliff, Texas, to contain twelve rooms for school purposes and the cost of said building, complete, not to exceed the sum of $22,000,…" The cornerstone was laid at the corner of Patton and Tenth streets for the school in September, 1892 under the auspices of the Masonic grand lodge of Texas.[7]
In 1891 William Hardin Adamson was named superintendent and Oak Cliff Central School operated at that location until a new building was constructed to house the high school in 1915 at the corner of Ninth and Beckley. The old building was then operated as an elementary school until 1926 when it was torn down and the students assigned to John H. Reagan and James Bowie schools and later to the new Ruthmeade School (now John F. Peeler). The lot at 201 East Ninth Street has been the site of a Dallas high school facility since 1915.[8]
The school is named for William Hardin Adamson, who became superintendent of the Oak Cliff School District shortly after moving to Oak Cliff in 1901. In the decade after the City of Dallas annexed the Town of Oak Cliff and merged school districts, the Dallas ISD built Oak Cliff High School to relieve crowding at Dallas High School, built just 8 years prior.[9] Adamson was named principal of the new school. He served as principal until 1934 and died a year later on 26 May 1935 at age 71. A week after his death, the school system renamed Oak Cliff High School after Adamson.[3]
The 1924 Oak Cliff High School football team won the state championship, one of only two DISD high schools to win a state football title (Sunset, in 1950 with the now-discontinued "City" championship, is the other).[10]Carter High School was forced to forfeit its 1988 Class AAAAA title, so its state championship no longer counted.[citation needed]
Overcrowding problems at Oak Cliff High School were relieved by the 1925 opening of Sunset High School.[11]
Adamson High School was one of six high schools in Dallas in the 1930s and 1940s; the only other high school in Oak Cliff was Sunset High School, which was located about 19 blocks from Adamson High.[citation needed]
The location of Adamson High School is just four blocks from the Texas Theater where Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, was captured.
During the Cold War, Adamson also became a fallout shelter. In the new building, a secret compartment room was added in the art room underground.
Around 2009, DISD planned to raze Adamson. Some Adamson alumni created a movement to have Adamson declared a Dallas landmark so that the district would be unable to raze the existing campus.[12] DISD acquired other property so it could build the new Adamson.[13]
The new Adamson was built on the site of the Oak Cliff Christian Church, which DISD had demolished after preservationists had not found a buyer for the facility. Houses and apartments were also acquired and demolished for the new facility.[14]
On June 8, 2011, the old W. H. Adamson High School building was granted historical status by the Dallas City Council.[15] Additionally in June 2011 the school was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Today there are two buildings. The new building is in use while, as of 2014, the old building is no longer occupied.[16]
Athletics
The W.H. Adamson Leopards compete in the following sports:[17]
Adamson is one of the oldest football programs in Texas, it being the 9th oldest[18]
Facilities
The auditorium of the new main building has 580 seats.
The current, main building has 223,496 square feet (20,763.5 m2) of area. The auditorium of the main building has 580 seats. It has ROTC facilities, including a gun range; a coffee-shop operated by students; child development facilities; and facilities for disabled students.[14]
In 2015 some alumni argued that the old building should be more heavily utilized.[9]
There is also a separate automotive technology building.[14]
Demographics
As of 2008[update] Adamson had almost 1,240 students, with about 80% being from low income families and 94% being Hispanic and Latino.[19] As of that year many of the students learned English as a second language, and the largest group of students who were not U.S. born originated from Ocampo, Guanajuato.[20] That year the head ESL teacher, Marcia Niemann, stated that some students in the ESL program take jobs outside of school to finance family members in Mexico and the U.S., and that most parents of ESL students had educations below the equivalent of the 9th grade.[21]
As of 2008[update] the school had 85 teachers, including 16 who were bilingual.[21] That year the school had four full-time ESL teachers, four bilingual ESL teaching assistants, and two non-bilingual ESL teaching assistants.[20]
This article's list of alumni may not follow Wikipedia's verifiability policy. Please improve this article by removing names that do not have independent reliable sources showing they merit inclusion in this article AND are alumni, or by incorporating the relevant publications into the body of the article through appropriate citations.(February 2019)
This list is incomplete. Italicized public schools are not in the "full purpose" Dallas city limits but have portions of Dallas in their attendance boundaries.
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