The Chicago Public Schools announced plans for a public magnet school on the city's Near West Side in mid–1970. A proposal by community residents called for a high school to be built at 211 S. Laflin, which was an empty lot that had been burned out during the riots following the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968. The school opened on September 3, 1975, as a selective enrollment school under the leadership of the school's first principal, Bernarr E. Dawson.