Manassas High School, just ahead of you, is one of the oldest historically Black high schools in Memphis, with an alumni list that reads like a who's who of American music and culture. Established in the early twentieth century to serve Black students in a segregated school system, Manassas became something far more than the city's educational policies intended. The school's music program produced an extraordinary concentration of talent: trumpeter Booker Little, saxophonist George Coleman, pianist Harold Mabern, and — most famously — Isaac Hayes, who attended Manassas in the late 1950s.
Hayes went on to become the co-writer and producer of dozens of classic Stax Records songs before recording 'Hot Buttered Soul' and 'Shaft,' which made him one of the most influential musicians in American history. The fact that so much musical genius emerged from a segregated school with inferior resources and second-hand textbooks is a testament to extraordinary teachers, a committed community, and the indomitable human need to create beauty regardless of the conditions imposed upon it.