District of Columbia Teachers College
Washington, DC
1955-1977
E-Travel
Most online documents concerning the District of Columbia Teachers College are government documents of congressional hearing involving budgets and appropriations. The UDC Digital Collection contains images of students, buildings, and the seal (right).
History
District of Columbia Teachers College was created after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. At that time Washington D.C. had two teachers colleges—the all-white Wilson Teachers College and the all-black Miner Teachers College. The two schools were merged in 1955.
D.C.T.C. quickly began to provide support for practicing DC teachers, offering evening and weekend classes, a teachers institute for a model urban school, a practicum in school administration, and a series of courses for elementary teachers. The school was allowed to offer graduate credit, and in 1958 awarded its first Master of Arts degrees.
Education Directory listed the enrollment as 1,275 in 1964. This figure may have been helped by the fact the DCTC had the lowest tuition and fees ($70) of any of the 292 colleges in the American Association of Colleges and Universities. The Kansas City Plainsman newspaper found it newsworthy that since the majority of D.C.T.C. students were black the school’s first homecoming queen was also black.
After the creation of Federal City College and Washington Institute of Technology in 1968, the city looked at the advantages of combining the three under a single structure, and so the University of the District of Columbia was created in the fall of 1977, costing each component its identity.
Bricks and Mortar
Fortunately the Miner Teachers College campus on Georgia Avenue and the Wilson Teachers College campus on Harvard Street were only a few blocks apart. This proximity allowed the new entity to utilize both campuses.
The Miner Building housed science labs, music rooms, a gymnasium, an auditorium, reference reading rooms, the reading clinic and the foreign language labs in addition to regular classrooms and faculty offices.
The Wilson Building housed the administrative offices, the main library, and the art gallery as well as classrooms and gymnasium. It also housed the speech clinic for the District of Columbia public schools.
In 1958 DC Teachers College added LaSalle Laboratory School at the corner of Riggs Road and Madison Street.
Main entrance of Harvard Street Building. Google image (accessed 1-19-2017)<https://www.google.com/maps/@38.9267364,-77.0275924,3a,75y,173.23h,94.12t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1su5LNwlVv53dOtZB4mX0_cA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656>)
Sports
Team name: Cougars
School Colors: Red and White
District of Columbia Teachers College played football off and on from 1955 to 1974. Assuming that Dr. Roger B. Taylor records records are complete, there was no team for three of those seasons, and four other seasons showed five or fewer games. The overall record was 24-62. The 1971 team won four of six games, the high water mark. DC Teachers played Gallaudet 10 times, winning four. Other common opponents were Cheney (PA), Delaware Valley (PA), Newport News Apprentice (VA), Howard (DC), Montclair State (NJ), Virginia Commonwealth(VA) and Jersey City(NJ).
DC Teachers also fielded teams in basketball and baseball. Inaugural classes of the U.D.C. Athletic Hall of Fame have recognized the contributions of the players and coaches of D.C.T.C., noting that the basketball teams were conference champions for four consecutive years.
1963 District of Columbia Teachers baseball team. Image courtesy of the University of the District of Columbia Archives.
Note: Images are used in accordance with their “terms of use” as I understand those terms. Recopying or republishing these images may be restricted or forbidden.