In 1969, West Philadelphia High School’s enrollment was 99 percent African American, with some 3,800 students packed into a building whose capacity was 2,400. The high school’s principal, Walter Scott, saw the Free School as a means both to reduce overcrowding at WPHS and to outsource the main building’s disruptive students, especially its gang members.
Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA