interest in making Girard College racially integrated, as the city's public schools had long been. After an extended, bitter, 14-year civil-rights struggleincluding Martin Luther King Jr.'s August 1965 address to a crowd outside Girard's front gates ("[Philadelphia,] the cradle of liberty, that has ... a kind of Berlin Wall to keep the colored children of God out") the first four black boys entered the school in September 1968. Sixteen years later, the policy of an all-male student body was also changed, and the first girls, both black and white, were admitted in 1984. Current enrollment of Girard College in the 21st century is about evenly divided between boys and girls and about 90% African-American. The Girard Estate remains open in perpetuity. Its endowment and financial resources are held in trust by the courts of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which provides much of the school's operating budget. History Girard College was founded in 1833, three years before the establishment of the second-oldest public high school in America, the Central High School of Philadelphia, which soon became the capstone and flagship of the Philadelphia City Public Schools system and followed the first such secondary school in New England's Massachusetts, of the English High School of Boston in 1821, and six years before the third oldest such institution further south in Baltimore, Maryland, then named "The High School", (later renamed the "Male High School", then the "Central High School of Baltimore" when two female public high schools were established), and later The Baltimore City College, which is its title today, both are ensconced in landmark distinctive structures and are of the modern "magnet school" type, with college prep/academic curricula, strict admission standards, with noted faculty and famous alumni with respected roles in their cities and states, similar to Girard's historic role in Philadelphia along with later Central High and Girls' High. The buildings and classrooms for Girard took some time to design and construct with their expensive "Greek Revival" stone architecture, but were ready and opened on January 1, 1848, under provisions of Girard's will supervised by the appointed trustees, including banker and financier Nicholas Biddle, (1786-1844). His vision as a school for poor, white, orphaned boys was unique in educating an entirely unserved population. Girard saw a chance to educate boys who might never reach their potential and to prepare them for useful, productive lives. Girard's vision for the school can best