Jackson’s first high school for African Americans moved from its 1926 location at 126 E. Ash Street to this International Style building, constructed in the same Equalization-era project as the white high schools Provine (2400 Robinson Road) and Murrah (1400 Murrah Drive). A red brick auditorium block anchors a long, two-story tan brick classroom wing with banked windows, and an uptilted canopy shelters the main entrance. In May 1963, Lanier students staged a walkout to protest the brutal treatment of Tougaloo College students at the Woolworth lunch counter sit-in, leading to beatings and arrests.