HISTORY

The Frederick Douglass Junior High School 139 or Public School 139, came into existence in, September of 1924, when marching students and staff members, led by, Robert S. Dixon, then a teacher of music later to become an assistant principal and principal assembled on Seventh Avenue and 140th Street. They marched around a night club which rested atop a winding hill at that location, and then proceeded east onto the block bounded by Seventh and Lenox Avenues to the site of Junior High School 139. Across the street from the entrance to the school stood elegant apartment houses with canopies extending from the building line to the curb, each tended by a uniformed doorman. Such was the scene in the 1920s on this Harlem street.

The school was relocated to 150th street and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Blvd( Seventh Ave.) in 1969, became coed, and its name was changed to the Frederick Douglass Intermediate School 10 and subsequently to the Frederick Douglass Academy in 1991.