The Inter-High School Athletic Association was a high school

High school

High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....

 athletic conference

Athletic conference

An athletic conference is a collection of sports teams, playing competitively against each other at the professional, collegiate, or high school level. In many cases conferences are subdivided into smaller and smaller divisions, with the best teams competing at successively higher levels...

 active from approximately 1896 to 1958.

It was formed around 1896, when the first track and field

Track and field

Track and field is a sport comprising various competitive athletic contests based around the activities of running, jumping and throwing. The name of the sport derives from the venue for the competitions: a stadium which features an oval running track surrounding a grassy area...

 meet of the Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 schools was inaugurated. A football

American football

American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...

 championship of the schools had been conducted since 1893, but it usually consisted of contests between just two schools. There was no football league until at least the 1898 season. A baseball

Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

 league was begun in 1897, and basketball

Basketball

Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...

 was added to the program in 1916. Tennis

Tennis

Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...

 and swimming

Swimming (sport)

Swimming is a sport governed by the Fédération Internationale de Natation .-History: Competitive swimming in Europe began around 1800 BCE, mostly in the form of the freestyle. In 1873 Steve Bowyer introduced the trudgen to Western swimming competitions, after copying the front crawl used by Native...

 were added to the program after World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, but without any league championship meet. A tennis meet was added in 1925, and a golf meet in 1927.

Original members were Central, Western, Eastern, and Business. Technical was added in 1902. Anacostia

Anacostia High School

Anacostia High School is a public high school located in the Southeast quadrant of the District of Columbia.-Formation:In August 2009, Friendship Public Charter School became a partner with DC Public Schools to manage the high school. As a result, the school became known as the Academies at...

 and Wilson joined the league in the 1930s. The schools in D.C. were segregated

Racial segregation in the United States

Racial segregation in the United States, as a general term, included the racial segregation or hypersegregation of facilities, services, and opportunities such as housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation along racial lines...

 during the history of this league, and therefore the African-American schools in the district, namely Armstrong, Dunbar

Dunbar High School (Washington, D.C.)

Dunbar High School is a public secondary school located in Washington, D.C., United States. The school is located in the Truxton Circle neighborhood of Northwest Washington, two blocks from the intersection of New Jersey and New York Avenues...

, and Cardozo, were not a part of the Inter-High School conference. A new conference was formed in 1958 -- the D.C. Interscholastic Athletic Association

D.C. Interscholastic Athletic Association

The District of Columbia Interscholastic Athletic Association is the public high school athletic league in Washington, D.C. The league was founded in 1958. The original high school conference for D.C. schools was the Inter-High School Athletic Association, formed around 1896...

-- which brought into one league all the District public high schools.