Established in 1875, Sumner High School was the first high school for Black students west of the Mississippi River. Named for Charles Sumner, the abolitionist senator from Massachusetts who was nearly beaten to death on the Senate floor in 1856 by a pro-slavery congressman, Sumner High School became one of the most important educational institutions in African American history. The school is located in the Ville neighborhood, which from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century was the heart of Black St. Louis — a self-sufficient community that developed its own institutions, businesses, cultural life, and professional class in response to the city's rigid racial segregation.
Sumner's alumni list reads like a who's who of 20th-century African American achievement: Chuck Berry, who attended Sumner in the late 1940s before his musical career took off; Tina Turner, born in Tennessee but who attended Sumner; Dick Gregory, the comedian and civil rights activist; Arthur Ashe, the tennis champion; and Grace Bumbry, the opera singer. The school produced this constellation of talent because it had to — Sumner was where Black St. Louis sent its children when every other institution was closed to them. Segregation concentrated talent in one place, and that concentration produced extraordinary results.