McKinley Technology High School

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McKinley Technology High School is a public citywide 9th–12th grade high school in the District of Columbia Public Schools in Northeast Washington, D.C.. The school, an offshoot of Central High School (now Cardozo Senior High School), originally was called McKinley Technical High School and was located at 7th Street NW and Rhode Island Avenue NW in the District of Columbia. The United States Congress allocated $26 million in 1926 for the construction of the existing building at 2nd and T Streets NE, in the Eckington area. The school is named for William McKinley, the 25th President of the United States.The school was exclusively for white residents of the City of Washington until integrated with other DC schools by an Executive Order by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in June 1954. The school underwent a rapid change in the ethnic groups attending the school, similar to other schools in Washington, DC, and was a majority African-American school by 1960. The school continued to offer outstanding programs in printing, automotive technology, and other technical fields.Between 1929 and 1940 and again in 1942-1943 the school's gymnasium, Tech Gymnasium, served as a home court for the Georgetown Hoyas basketball team. In 1965, the school's football field was a secret emergency landing area for President Lyndon B. Johnson in the event of a national emergency or attack on the United States. By the late 1960s, Tech's boys basketball teams, nicknamed the "Trainers", coached by the late McKinley Armstrong, reached national prominence, winning city, league, and even parochial school invitational tournaments. The school had a television production program taught in the Lemuel Penn Center in the 1970s. Its quiz teams during that era fared well on America's longest running television quiz program, It's Academic.