On October 20, 1931, Hoffman-Boston Junior-Senior High School is dedicated with ceremonies.
The school replaced an older, 4 room school known as Jefferson, on approximately the same site. The school was named to honor two people who had served as principals in the African-American country schools: Edward Clarendon Hoffman and Ella Boston.
Hoffman was born in 1866 in Freedman’s Village. A respected member of the community for many years, he had been a member of the Board of Directors of the Lomax Church when its new building was erected in 1922, and he was a founder of the Nauck Citizens Association in 1926, the year he died.
Boston had been a teacher at the old Rosslyn School from 1891 to 1904 when she moved to the Kemper School in Green Valley, first as its only teacher and then as a principal for many years.
In 1915, Hoffman-Boston was built as the first junior high for African-Americans in Arlington after parents with children attending the Jefferson School asked for a new school house to be built in their area. The dedication in 1931 was for its expansion to become the county’s first senior high school as well. Later it became an alternative education center
The Hoffman-Boston name has been incorporated into the name of the H-B Woodlawn Secondary Program–which has been housed in the Stratford School building and has been renamed. The original Hoffman-Boston school building was renovated and reopened in 2000 as Hoffman-Boston Elementary School.
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