Clay Street School originated in 1873 and was the first all brick building for "the colored of Memphis".  Black citizens succeeded in staffing the entire school with black teachers.  Soon afterward  Clay School was renamed Kortrecht Grammar School, and then Kortrecht High School in 1891.   The first Memphis Black High School class graduated in 1891.

In 1911 the Memphis Board of Education decided that a new school was needed to replace the old and inadequate Kortrecht High School. At this time Kortrecht was the city's only Black public high school.  Thus every Black graduate in Memphis was an alumnus of Kortrecht school.  In 1926 Kortrecht High school became Booker T. Washington in another new building.