One of the key concepts of the progressive education movement that was incorporated by Superintendent Wirt was his plans for the Gary school system, was the idea of offering both vocational training and college preparatory classes to its students. Many of the Negro students in Gary wished to take advantage of the college preparatory option. However, courses required to complete the college prep option were not offered at the segregated schools available to the colored students. Wirt addressed this inequality for many years by transferring Negro students, to Froebel School where the courses were part of the curriculum.
At the start of the 1927 school year, with the overcrowded student enrollment conditions at Froebel worsening, Wirt, did not want his Progressive School plan to fail. So, he directed that 18, new to high school and the most academically able students from the Virginia Street School be transferred. Those with the temperaments that staff felt could withstand the pressures of the White students and staff to the all-White Emerson High School. So they would have the courses needed to continue post graduation goals. This action wasn’t well received by the White student body, parents or staff. On September 26, 1927, six (600) hundred Emerson students walked out and declared that they “will not go back to Emerson ’til it’s White.”