Harold Cressy High School 3.46

Harold Cressy High School is a secondary school in District Six of Cape Town in South Africa. It was founded in January 1951 as the Cape Town Secondary School. The school has played a substantial role in South African history during the apartheid period and the building is identified as an important landmark.HistoryThe school's site has a long association with education. In 1934 the Jewish community built Hope Lodge Primary School on this site. Later the first tertiary education facility for coloured students was established here. It was called the Hewat Training College and it was still training teachers here in 1961; but it has since been renamed the College of Cape Town and is now based in Crawford.This school was founded in January 1951 as the Cape Town Secondary School but it changed its name in 1953. In the beginning the school had three teachers supervising two year seven classes and one year eight. The building was a wooden framed fabrication with three classrooms in the grounds of the college.The school is named for Harold Cressy who was the first coloured man to gain a Bachelor of Arts degree in South Africa.ConflictOn 11 February 1966, P. W. Botha declared that District Six was to be emptied to make way for white residents under the Group Areas Act. However, like nearby Trafalgar High School, Harold Cressy High School refused to move. 60,000 people were moved from District Six by 1982 and they were rehoused in the Cape Flats some distance away.