Lockerman High School (1930-1966)

June 10th, 1930, Sir Isaac Thomas, on behalf of the Parent Teachers Association of Denton, gave the Board of Education six acres of land in north Denton as a site for the proposed new black high school. The Lockerman High School was named after Joseph Harrison Lockerman who was born in Denton in 1862.  He earned  teaching certificates for high school subjects, and graduated from Morgan State University in 1886.  At a recent reunion, several people interviewed said that   in the school’s early days, parents paid for a privately owned bus,  whose owner, Walter Mosley, would drive their children to school. The students on the bus were all black  

Beginning in 1956 the Caroline County Board of Education had announced that county schools were open to all students on a freedom of choice. However desegregation was very slow. Beginning with the 1964-65 school year, some white teachers were assigned to all-black schools, and in the 1965-66, seven black teachers were on faculties of desegregated schools formerly staffed by       all-white personnel.

The month of April 1965 was designated by the Board of Education of Caroline County as a period for application for transfer. Its desegregation plan was accepted by the U.S. Office of Education on June 18,1965.  The report stated that the Board of Education was planning to desegregate the entire Caroline County school system by establishing geographic attendance  areas as soon as the new senior high school was constructed. In 1966,  after a newly built North Caroline High School opened in Ridgely, the Lockerman High School became a middle school. Francis W. Gates (pictured below) was the last of the Lockerman High School principals (1961-66).