Booker T. Washington High School (nicknamed "Booker T.") is a secondary school located in the Independence Heights community in Houston, Texas. Washington serves grades 9 through 12, and is a part of the Houston Independent School District. The school has a neighborhood program that serves neighborhoods outside the 610 Loop and inside Beltway 8 in the northwest part of Houston, including the neighborhoods of Independence Heights, Highland Heights, and most of Acres Homes. The school was named after education pioneer Booker T. Washington. The High School For Engineering Professions is located on the campus. History The school was established in 1893 in Houston's Fourth Ward as "Colored High." The first location for the school, 303 West Dallas, is considered to be within Downtown Houston as of 2007. Originally it was the only secondary school for black people in the city; at the time schools were segregated by race. A 1923 Houston Informer article stated that the school building was in bad repair, calling it a "rat trap". In 1925 the school board stated that it would build a new black high school due to the increasing black population. The Houston Informer stated that the schools need to be named after prominent black people from the city and/or other successful black persons. The original colored high school was renamed after Booker T. Washington, a famous black educator who became the namesake of many black schools in the Southern United States. The school was given its current name in 1928. Washington was relieved by the construction and opening of Yates and Wheatley high schools in the 1920s. The school moved to its current location in Independence Heights in 1959. Lockett Junior High School, which closed in June 1968, was established in the former Washington campus. The school desegregated by 1970. After Franklyn Wesley retired as principal in June 2007, Houston ISD chose Mark Bedell, formerly an assistant principal at Worthing High School, as the principal. Victor Keys, an assistant principal and an alumna of Washington, would remain as an assistant principal. Some alumni of Washington High School and members of the community around the school protested the decision to hire Bedell because they wished for the district to hire Keys instead of Bedell. The current Washington principal is Carlos Phillips II. Wesley died September 11, 2007, at age 88. He served as the principal of the campus for more than 40 years,