The short version of a long story: from a Rosenwald school on Wright Avenue to a national family of alumni. Every line is sourced.
Built at Wright Avenue and Ringo Street with $67,000 from the Rosenwald Fund, $30,000 from the General Education Board, and money raised locally. It opens as the Negro School of Industrial Arts.
Dedicated April 14, 1930 as Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, with 1,163 high school students and 74 junior college students. The first graduating class numbers 58.
Students move into the new Horace Mann High School on April 9, 1956. The $926,000 campus is recognized by the American Institute of Architects. Dunbar becomes a junior high.
Six of the Little Rock Nine, Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Thelma Mothershed, Terrence Roberts, Minnijean Brown, and Melba Pattillo, transfer from Horace Mann to Central High School.
Governor Faubus closes every public high school in Little Rock for the 1958 to 1959 school year, Horace Mann included. Of 750 Black high school students, 442 do not attend school that year.
After ten years as a high school, Horace Mann becomes a junior high. The Transitional Class of 1972 marks the change.
Dunbar alumni gather in Detroit in August 1973 for the first all class reunion. The National Dunbar Alumni Association is chartered in Arkansas in June 1978.
Listed August 6, 1980. In February 2026 the building is redesignated as nationally significant.
The Dunbar and Horace Mann alumni associations merge in July 2009, joining the two schools' alumni into a single national body.
The City of Little Rock honors NDHMAA with the Sustain the Rock award in the nonprofit category for commemorating the history of Black students in the city and for its annual scholarships.
Encyclopedia of Arkansas, Paul Laurence Dunbar High School. National Park Service, Paul Laurence Dunbar High School. Wikipedia, Dunbar High School (Little Rock) and Horace Mann Senior High School. History of the National Dunbar Alumni Association by Dr. Erma Glasco Davis, as published on the association's earlier website. Central Arkansas Library System, National Dunbar Alumni Association correspondence. City of Little Rock, 2024 Sustain the Rock award winners.