Harry B. Thompson: First Principal of Peter G. Appling High School

Every day, thousands of cars pass by the Harry B. Thompson Stadium located on Shurling Drive in Macon. Little do many know that the structure was named for the first principal of Macon’s second Black high school. Harry B. Thompson Stadium, which opened in 1996, sits on the former campus of Peter G. Appling High School, which opened in 1959. Prior to that date, the only option for Black youth to gain a high school education was at the co-educational Ballard-Hudson High School.

Ballard-Hudson has a storied existence in Macon’s history. Its roots can be traced to Lewis High School, an ambitious endeavor of the American Missionary Association, to provide education to newly emancipated African Americans following the Civil War. Although missionaries who arrived in Macon after the ward discovered rudimentary education already being provided by literate and semi-literate formerly enslaved men and women, Lewis is credited with being one of a handful of high school options, although private, for African Americans in the south. Lewis High School changed its name to Ballard Normal & Industrial Institute in 1888. It merged with Hudson High School, the first public high school for Black youth, in 1942.

Seventeen years later, “across the river,” Peter G. Appling High School opened its doors in 1959. The school’s mascot was the Wildcats and Harry B. Thomspon was its first and only principal. Thompson came over from Ballard-Hudson, where he had also coached. A giant of a man, Thompson was a native of Bluefield, W.V., and graduated from Morris Brown College in Atlanta, where he was reportedly a star athlete. Loved and respected by many, Thompson was a member of Washington Avenue Presbyterian Church, earned a master’s degree from Atlanta University, and was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.