This website originally began extensive research to find printed evidence and/or information about Hope Night School that would lead to a "Tech connection".  We verified in archived newspaper articles that  the Hope Night School began in 1878 and became part of the City School District in 1892.  An 1894 Memphis Directory lists the Hope Night School on Adams, corner of Charleston, with the description "A free school for the business education of boys".  In 1898, the school was listed at the corner of Main and Poplar.  Girls were admitted to the Hope Night School in 1910.

There have also been articles and references that the Hope Night School continued to exist up to 1928, long after the Vocational High School opened in 1911 at "the castle" on Poplar and we now know that Hope Night School classes were conducted IN the Vocational High School building concurrently with the night classes OF Vocational High.  In addition, it appears that by the early 1900's Hope Night School had mainly become a school where immigrants learned English and enough history to pass citizenship tests.  But we did not find any evidence that the two schools ever merged or that there was ever a discussion about the possibility of a merger.   Hope Night School closed in 1928 simply because "it was no longer needed" since Tech's own well-attended night classes were doing the same job.

The strongest evidence that Hope Night School was not a forerunner of Tech goes back to 1911 when the new Central High School opened.  At the same time that Central was created, the Board of Education created the new Memphis Vocational School, with its own night school program.  Since Hope NS was already part of the school system, why wouldn't they simply have renamed it Hope Vocational School instead of creating a separate school?  Instead, Hope Night School continued to run its own, separate course along side "Tech", until 1928.  (See verification articles below).

Various articles about Hope Night School are reproduced below.  Two of the later articles verify that Hope Night School AND Crockett Technical existed simultaneously.

Lillian Wyckoff Johnson was born in 1864. Her family was active in education. Her father had started Hope Night School for orphan boys who would roam the streets of Memphis.  She became superintendent for Hope Night School from 1884-92.  Her mother taught Sunday School and headed a group of twenty ladies who taught the poor to sew. At age 15, Lillian attended Wellesley and later received her bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan. She returned to Memphis and joined the faculty of Clara Conway Institute. She taught history at Vassar for five years and then studied abroad at Sorbonne and Leipzig. In 1902 she became the first woman in the United States to get a doctorate from Cornell. She founded the West Tennesse Normal School (Now Memphis State University) and she was president of Western College for two years, 1904-1906. She resigned from her position in 1906 due to poor health.

The newspaper articles below are very interesting. Click on the fragments to read the entire article.