Booker T. Washington High School was the first African American high school in the city. It was named after the African-American education pioneer Booker Taliaferro Washington. Established in 1950, the school has produced many prominent doctors, lawyers (including Johnny Cochran from parent school Central), and politicians. The school is located in the Lakeside neighborhood, on Milam street.

"A citizens' committee making a survey of the Shreveport black community in 1945 reported that educational facilities for Negroes were "deplorable" and that the construction of a new high school would be one step toward improvement. This survey plus the over-crowded conditions at Central High and Milam Street Trade School led to the construction of a new black high school on a site across from the trade school, completed in 1949, which became known as Booker T. Washington High School, named for the founder of Tuskegee Institute.

Milam Street Trade School became a junior high school when Booker T. Washington High School opened in 1950.

Classes began at Booker T Washington High School on January 23, 1950. It was a model school for blacks, even for many white communities. Many referred to it as one of the best built schools for blacks in the country. Built at a cost of a million and a half dollars ($1,514.065) for the physical plant and $500,000 for equipment, Booker T. Washington was one {of} the most modern schools in Louisiana, offering innovations such as individual lockers for all students, central heating, movable desks, modern laboratories, administrative offices, asphalt tile floors, and fluorescent lighting.

The curriculum offered basic high school/college prep academic courses in English, literature, music, social science, health, general science, biology, algebra, geometry, chemistry, and physical education, as well as numerous vocational courses to supplement the work at Milam Street trade School. New vocational courses included commercial baking; laundry and dry cleaning processes; typing, shorthand and bookkeeping; auto mechanics that incorporated machine body and fender repair; masonry and cement work; graphic arts; carpentry; electrical name mechanics; sheet metal working, pottery and clay; landscape gardening and hot-house horticulture; leather-craft; home laundry; cooking, sewing, needle-craft; shoe-craft; and beauty culture (later cosmetology). Many black Shreveporters attribute their success today to their preparation for the world of work at Booker T. Washington High School.