How Century-old Traditions Have Evolved to Change What it Means to Belong at Northside High School 

This May, Northside High School crowned a royal court that has been dormant for decades. 

In the 1920’s and 1930’s, the May Day was a spirit rally amid the bleak prospects of the Great Depression for the mostly white, working class students of Jefferson Davis High School, the name the campus bore before it was changed in 2016 to reflect the neighborhood it evolved to serve.  

Nearly a century later, the ceremony returned just days after Northside High School received its first A rating from the Texas Education Agency, marking another moment of possibility for a school whose student body has transformed dramatically since its early days.

Draped in ceremonial velvet and gold, senior Alexis Gonzalez and classmate Ariana Williams stood before their peers as the newly crowned May Day King and Queen. 

Much like the predecessors that paved the paths for them to explore their interests and leadership at the campus, their names will be written in the history books to inspire future Panthers with that mission for years to come. 

“Keeping tradition thriving is one of the things I really prioritize,” Gonzalez said. “ I definitely felt like one of my missions was accomplished here.” 

May Day royalty Alexis Gonzalez and Arianna Williams pictured on their thrones while holding historic yearbooks commemorating early-century May Day ceremonies. 

 

Living History

Every day, students step past a Northside High School’s historic 1920s Gothic Tudor facade into a state-of-the-art facility built for 21st-century learning to prepare students to attend colleges across the nation and to enter careers in high-demand fields such as culinary arts, hotel management, and audiovisual production.

Walking through the hallways, students pass historical displays and vintage artifacts that remind them they are part of a legacy—from championship trophies to autographed portraits of notable alumni like Olympic boxer Rocky Juarez, baseball champion Carl Crawford, restaurateur Irma Galvan, and former Texas Congressman Gene Green.   

“If you look closely you can see walls or trophies or articles that have been here for a long time, you’re reminded that you too can be a piece on these walls,” Vanessa Catalan, Class of 2025, said. 

Among the most prized archives are the white cowboy boots worn by the Pantherettes, a dance team that traces its roots to Northside's earliest days as the Carlton Cadettes. Groups like the Pantherettes create smaller circles within an already intimate school, where students are seen and known.

"I feel honored to be a part of the Pantherettes because we really do show the value of like familyhood—big sisters and little sisters alongside brothers and little brothers," said current Pantherette Lieutenant Kennedy Morgan

The Pantherettes (bottom) are a dance and drill team that evolved from the drum-and-bugle Carlton Cadettes (top)  of the early century. (Courtesy Northside High School) 

For Francisco Rodriguez, the highest-ranking Pantherette of 2009, that sense of belonging shaped his career in education. Even while attending Cornell University, he travelled between Ithaca, N.Y. and Houston to choreograph for the team as an alumnus. 

His time on the team inspired him to double major in dance and sociology and to study how schools, and community organizations like the Pantherettes, can serve as spaces to break negative societal trends. 

Now, as Northside High School's Magnet Coordinator, he is on a mission to expand those spaces for the hundreds of students he influences.

"What makes a school unique is that it's a four-year moment where students can feel celebrated and seen, where they can feel a part of the spirit in the community," Rodriguez said. "We're not always going to wear purple, but hopefully you develop a sense of pride that you can take into college or into your career or into the military."

Before becoming Northside's Magnet Coordinator, Francisco Rodriguez was a 2009 graduate and Colonel of the Pantherettes. (Courtesy Francisco Rodriguez)

Evolving Through Inclusion 

Going through old yearbooks, Rodriguez can see the school spirit that persists across decades, a phenomena he knows first-hand as a third-generation panther. 

Who is represented within class pictures, though, paints a picture of segregation and struggle sustained by Black and Hispanic residents in the near Northside community. Even though these residents were the labor force behind Houston's manufacturing boom in the 1900s, the school system meant to serve their children was slow to catch up. 

Northside remained segregated for over a decade after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregation unconstitutional in 1954, with Black students barred from attending and Hispanic students often classified as "white" on paper so HISD could claim integration without disrupting white-majority schools.

When Rodriguez's grandparents attended in the 1970s, the school was on the brink of transformation. As more Black and Hispanic students were moving into the Northside High School zoning area, and activists were fighting for their rights to attend the school, the campus underwent changes in student life, which were documented by student and faculty historians in The Pride of the Northside website. 

The NAACP and other Black civil rights organizations carried the fight for desegregation through Ross v. HISD, a 1956 lawsuit brought on behalf of Houston's Black schoolchildren with Delores Ross Phlegm as lead plaintiff after she was rejected from the Northside High School feeder campus, Sherman Elementary. The lawsuit wouldn’t be settled until 1984, after the plaintiffs had been rejected from white schools, graduated from Black campuses, and built careers into their adulthood. 

According to The Pride of the Northside, It wouldn’t be until 1965 that the first Black students were admitted at Northside High School. By the 1970’s, the school had an Afro-American club, a predecessor of the school’s current Black Student Union. 

The Afro-American Club pictured outside of then-Jefferson Davis High School in 1972. (Courtesy Northside High School) 

While Hispanic students started attending the campus in smaller numbers in the 1930s, a social consciousness coincided with the civil rights movement. By the 1960s, the school had a student club called “Los Amigos,” dedicated to Hispanic culture and language. 

The Los Amigos Club is captured in the 1968 yearbook as was called “one of the fastest growing and most popular organizations this year," according to The Pride of the Northside. (Courtesy Northside High School) 

University of Houston professor Guadalupe San Miguel tracks the activism of Mexican American, or Chicano, students in Houston ISD in his 2005 book, Brown, Not White: School Integration and the Chicano Movement in Houston.

In 1969, approximately 100 Northside High School students walked out of class during an Advocating Rights for Mexican American Students (ARMAS) demonstration to demand Chicano history courses, Chicano counselors, and an end to their labeling as “white.”  

Throughout the civil rights era, Northside High School students remained actively engaged by participating in citywide desegregation boycotts and presenting formal demands for facility and curriculum upgrades after a student exchange with predominately white Westbury High exposed severe educational inequities in 1971, San Miguel wrote. 

Rodriguez says today's students aren't so different from that civil rights-era generation. What students demanded then, he says, still echoes in what they ask of their school now. He said social media has made the world smaller, exposing them to issues far beyond their neighborhood and giving them a sharper sense of their responsibility to build a more inclusive society.

Today, student leaders cite inclusivity as one of the outstanding factors of the Northside experience. Within the classrooms and student clubs, students feel a responsibility to foster the social and emotional conditions that have helped them thrive into their roles as leaders. 

"I think the Northside community has always been good at never discriminating against people from different backgrounds, skin colors—always allowing a place where unity can happen," Catalan said. "And that allows so many great ideas, so many traditions, and even new ones that just develop from different backgrounds."

Selling Houston on Northside

Rodriguez believes the school has the potential to become HISD's flagship campus as the downtown high school. As Magnet Coordinator, Rodriguez travels to middle schools across the district to sell Houstonians on why Northside High School is the place to be. 

He makes his case by advertising the tight-knit community. For families outside the attendance zone, he argues that the pre-college and career programs are one-of-a-kind and make the commute worthwhile. 

His strongest case, however, are the first-hand testimonies of Northside’s transformative student life. 

Taking a page from his time as student recruiter for Cornell’s admissions office, he created a Student Ambassador program that places students at the forefront of Northside’s recruitment efforts. 

Student Ambassadors go through a rigorous selection process and monthly training focused on handling tough questions from prospective Panthers. As student leaders in academics, athletics, the arts, and cultural clubs, Ambassadors promote Northside by giving families a glimpse of what life at the school can look like. 

"I want them to be the shining example, so that eighth graders and their families can see: these are the kind of students that Northside has," Rodriguez said. "They're confident, they're well-informed, they're professional — they're going to the colleges or careers of their dreams."

Student Ambassadors include leaders from every student organization and accompany Rodriguez across the district to recruit new students to the campus. (Courtesy Francisco Rodriguez)

Catalan is one example of the kind of student Rodriguez hopes prospective families will see in those ambassadors.

When Catalan arrived at Northside as a freshman, she was laser-focused on academics. But looking back as an alumna, she said much of her personal growth happened outside the classroom, as teachers encouraged her to pursue interests she had never considered before.

“Meeting wonderful teachers and staff who saw beyond what my teen-self is possible created  encouragement and desire to make them proud,” she said. “Their words never lose meaning, even after all this time.” 

She had never danced before joining the Patherettes, though she rose through the ranks and eventually achieved the highest-ranking role as Colonel. Her leadership made her a candidate for the Student Ambassador program, which she said harnessed her identity as a public speaker and mobilizer. 

Today, she is a sophomore at the University of Houston, where she is studying Business Management and Dance—both passions born out of her student involvement at Northside. 

"What you need from an ambassador is to put yourself out there, to see how the school can give you opportunities where you can make something great," she said. "I found what it is that I want to do with my life, and what I found that I could potentially be good at."