Cardozo Education Campus, formerly Cardozo Senior High School and Central High School, is a combined middle and high school at 13th and Clifton Street in northwest Washington, D.C., United States, in the Columbia Heights neighborhood. Cardozo is operated by District of Columbia Public Schools. The school is named after clergyman, politician, and educator Francis Lewis Cardozo.

The Advanced Grammar School for Boys was established in 1877 and then combined with a similar school for girls in 1882 to form Washington High School, the first high school in the city. In 1890, the High School was split into three, with one high school opened in the current Peabody Elementary School building on Capitol Hill and another in Georgetown in the Curtis Building. As a result, the Washington High School became known as Central High School.^[4] In 1916, the school moved from Seventh and O to Thirteenth and Clifton.

In 1939, writing on behalf of the Board of Education of the District of Columbia now the District of Columbia State Board of Education, Superintendent Frank Ballou denied a request by contralto Marian Anderson to sing at the auditorium of the segregated white Central High School. As justification, he cited a federal law from 1906 requiring separate schools for the District. Meanwhile, the Daughters of the American Revolution had rejected a similar application. ^[5]

When Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from that organization in protest, author Zora Neale Hurston criticized her for remaining silent about the fact that the Board had also excluded Anderson. “As far as the high-school auditorium is concerned,” Hurston declared “to jump the people responsible for racial bias would be to accuse and expose the accusers themselves. The District of Columbia has no home rule; it is controlled by congressional committees, and Congress at the time was overwhelmingly Democratic. It was controlled by the very people who were screaming so loudly against the DAR. To my way of thinking, both places should have been denounced, or neither.” Although Anderson later performed at an open-air concert at the Lincoln Memorial, the Board retained its policy of exclusion.^[6]

Known locally as "the castle on the hill", Cardozo's building was designed by architect William B. Ittner, a school building architect. The building was dedicated on February 15, 1917.^[7] Cardozo Senior High School was established in 1928. Originally located at Rhode Island Avenue and Ninth Street NW, it relocated to the Central High School building in 1950 and renamed.^[8] Cardozo was assigned for "colored" students in the segregated system and became one of three black high schools in DC.

The U Street Metro station is partially named after this school, with "Cardozo" in the station's subtitle.^[9] Likewise, an alternative, Urban Renewal-era name for the Columbia Heights neighborhood is Upper Cardozo, and some of the public buildings in the area still bear this name.^{[citation needed]}

Until the 1954 opening of the all-black Luther Jackson High School in Fairfax County, Virginia,^[10] Cardozo and several other DCPS schools, along with a school in Manassas, Virginia, enrolled black secondary school students from the Fairfax County Public Schools as that district did not yet operate secondary schools for blacks.^[11]

In December 2011, work began to completely renovate Cardozo. In all, the renovation cost approximately $130 million and the school reopened for a new school year in August 2013.^[12] In addition to the physical changes to the building itself, the student body was increased with the addition of middle school students from the now-closed Shaw Middle School and the campus was renamed as Cardozo Education Campus.

Four different shootings happened on the school campus: the first on January 23, 1969 (1 dead, no injuries); the second on January 6, 1995 (1 dead, no injuries); the third on April 2, 2003 (1 injured, no deaths); and the fourth on September 22, 2006 (1 injured, no deaths).^[13][14]

Central High School

• Beatrice Aitchison, mathematician^[15]
• Caleb T. Bailey, United States Marine Corps brigadier general^[16]
• Sylvia Bernstein, civil rights activist^[17]
• Selma Munter Borchardt (1895– 1968), educator, lawyer, labor leader and lobbyist^[18]
• William G. Draper, US Air Force pilot^[19]
• George Dantzig, mathematician^[20]
• Pat Foote, U.S. Army brigadier general^[21]
• Charles D. Griffin, Navy admiral^[22]
• Herbert Haft, founder of Dart Drug and Crown Books discount chains^[23]
• J. Edgar Hoover, FBI director^[24]
• Yvonne Levy Kushner, actress^[25]
• Robert B. Luckey, Marine Corps general^[26]
• Bruce Magruder (1903), U.S. Army major general^[27]
• John S. McCain Jr., Navy admiral^[28]
• John F. O'Leary, U.S. government official^[29]
• Lansdale Sasscer, U.S. Congressman^[30]
• John F. Shafroth Jr., U.S. Navy vice admiral^[31]
• Alfred Sao-ke Sze, Chinese politician and diplomat^[32]
• Oliver Lyman Spaulding (1891), U.S. Army brigadier general^[33]
• Robert Trout, American radio and television journalist^[34]
• Karl Truesdell, U.S. Army major general^[35]
• Arthur Cutts Willard, engineer and university president^[36]
• Eben Eveleth Winslow, U.S. Army brigadier general^[37][38]

Cardozo Senior High

• H. R. Crawford (1957), politician^[39]
• Marvin Gaye, musician^[40]
• Petey Green, radio host^[41]
• Moochie Norris, basketball player^[42]
• James E. Mayo, museum director^[43]
• Conrad Tillard (born 1964), politician, Baptist minister, radio host, author, and activist
• Maury Wills, baseball player^[44]

This section needs additional citations for verification. (November 2022)

The following elementary schools feed into Cardozo:

• Marie Reed Elementary School
• Cleveland Elementary School
• Garrison Elementary School
• Raymond Education Campus
• School Without Walls @ Francis-Stevens
• Seaton Elementary School
• Ross Elementary School

The following middle schools feed into Cardozo:

• Raymond Education Campus
• School Without Walls at Francis-Stevens