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The handsome, new three-story Morse Elementary School at 22nd and Charlotte, built of dark vitrified brick, was opened at the beginning of the school year in September, 1906.
It replaced an earlier Morse School two blocks north which had been named for the inventor of the new telegraph system, Samuel F.B. Morse.
The earlier school had been opened in October, 1870, in a cornfield with only a few houses nearby.
Farm children who lived south and east of it attended, and the pupils in the northern part of the district had trouble at times crossing the muddy waters of O.K. Creek.
Under school superintendant I. I. Cammack, the Morse School was specified as an all-Negro school beginning with the fall session of 1927.
The name of the school was changed to Charles Sumner in honor of the Negro statesman and early advocate of Negro rights.
A fire of unknown origin destroyed the building on April 24, 1964.
Articles written at the time expressed the grief of the community over the loss of the school.
“Sumner as an entity is no more,” read a front-page story, “but its spirit lives on in the hearts and memories of its pupils, its teachers and its principal, Mrs. Lillian Orme, who watched the school burn with tears in her eyes.”
Michael Bushnell
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