Page 41 - Florida Sentinel 2-4-22

Black History: The History Behind The Names
High Schools
Howard W. Blake High School
Howard W. Blake Compre- hensive High School opened its doors in September 1956. The school was established to offer African American stu- dents a general education program with vocational em- phasis.
The initial enrollment combined Don Thompson Vocational High School and the junior high department of George Washington Carver Junior High School.
The school was closed in 1970, as part of the Hillsbor- ough County School Desegre-
Howard W. Blake
gation Plan. A new school was constructed on the banks of the Hillsborough River and opened in 1997, as a School of the Arts.
The school was named in honor of Howard W. Blake, a Hillsborough County educator.
Blake was a community leader, principal of Booker T. Washington Junior High School and most of all, an outstanding role model for young people. Howard W. Blake was born in Tampa and grew up in Palmetto.
Armwood High School
Blanche Armwood was the product of a family of achievers. The daughter of Levin Armwood, Jr., and Margaret Holloman, her great uncle, John Arm- wood, had been a negotiator between the Seminoles and white settlers on the south- ern Florida Frontier, and early landowner when he homesteaded 159 acres in early Hillsborough County.
Her maternal grandfather, Adam Holloman, owned citrus groves and was Hills- borough County Commis- sioner from 1873 to 1877. Her maternal great grandfa- ther, Mills Holloman, was also a citrus grower who served as Hillsborough County Commissioner, from 1868 to 1871.
The Armwoods enrolled Blanche in Saint Peter Claver and she graduated in 1902 with highest honors. That same year, at age 12, Blanche also passed the Florida State Uniform Teachers Examination.
Four years later, in 1906, she graduated from the Eng- lish-Latin course “summa cum laude,” merited a teach- ing certificate. She had planned to attend college, however, because of her fa- ther’s poor health, Blanche returned to Tampa instead; that fall she started teaching in the City’s Black public school system.
In 1914, the Tampa Gas Company, in conjunction with the Hillsborough County Board of Education and the Colored Ministers Alliance, hired her to organ- ize an industrial arts school that would specialize in do- mestic science. In its first year of operation, over two hundred women received certificates of completion.
Blanche Armwood January 23, 1890 -- - October 16, 1939
In 1922, the Hillsborough County School Board ap- pointed Armwood the first Supervisor of Negro Schools. During her eight-year tenure, she secured five new school buildings, increased Black teachers’ salaries, and extended the school year for Black students from six to nine months.
Aside from the leadership positions she held in Tampa, Armwood was chair of the Home Economics Depart- ment for the National Asso- ciation of Colored Women (NACW) and State Organizer of the Louisiana Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Arm- wood also participated in the suffrage movement, the anti-lynching crusades, and the 1920 presidential elec- tion as a national campaign speaker for the Republican Party.
She enrolled in Howard Law School in 1934, and graduated in 1938, with her Juris Doctorate Degree, be- coming the first black woman from Florida to earn a law degree. She died at age 49.
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