A. H. Parker

Arthur Harold Parker (born May 7, 1870 in Springfield, Ohio) was the long-time principal of Industrial High School in Birmingham, which now bears his name.

Parker's father was the son of a white man and a Chickasaw woman, born in Decatur. He took the name "Parker" from his master, from whom he escaped to Canada at the age of 12, then returned to Springfield, Ohio where he became a barber and shopkeeper. Parker's mother was born a slave in Virginia, given money for school by their former master when they were emancipated. She attended Oberlin College in Ohio and married Parker in 1867. Arthur was the second of their five children.

While in high school, Parker's mother fell ill during childbirth. He started working at his father's barber shop as well as doing his share of the housekeeping. He also studied law for two summers under one of his barbering clients, Judge Joe Miller, helping him toward being honored as a graduation speaker for his integrated high school.

Due to an injury to his father, Parker was unable to enter Oberlin College as he had planned. Instead he packed up his barber tools and went "prospecting" in the south. He was headed initially to Decatur, but after stops in Nashville and Atlanta, he decided to come, on August 17, 1887, to Birmingham, where he learned two of his uncles were living. These were Arthur A. Sensabaugh, a Methodist pastor, and James G. Clayton, a school-teacher. Clayton encouraged Parker to take the teacher's examination that September. Superintendent J. H. Phillips hired him as the 13th African American teacher in the system and assigned him to the new [{Slater School]] which opened in January 1888.