Pearl High School was a school for African American students. Franklin Gatewood Smith served as its principal. It was desegregated in 1971. It merged with another school to form
Pearl-Cohn Comprehensive High School. The original Pearl High School building, built in 1937 to house an
African-American school, was commissioned in 1936 by the
Public Works Administration (PWA) and was designed by
McKissack and McKissack, a prominent African-American architectural firm. The building features a red brick veneer and
Art Deco stylistic elements, in an architectural style commonly used by the PWA and known as
PWA Moderne. The building was expanded in 1945 and 1963, again with designs by McKissack and McKissack. The school was Nashville's first secondary magnet for grades 7-12. After Pearl High moved numerous times, settling at 17th Avenue in the 1950s and eventually to its current location at
Pearl Cohn Comprehensive High School, MLK Magnet, originally named Martin Luther King, Jr. Magnet High School for the Health Sciences and Engineering, opened its doors in August 1986 at the former Pearl High with only grades 7–9, adding one grade per year until 1990 when it had its first graduating class of 25 students. A
gymnasium was added to the building in 1995, designed by the Nashville architectural firm of Street, Dixon, Rick. The school's current name was adopted in 2001. The building is listed on the
National Register of Historic Places. In 2023, it was announced that between 2024 and 2028, MLK would transition from a 7-12 to a 9-12 model. The middle school curriculum available at MLK would instead be introduced at Head Magnet Middle School. The last 7th grade class at MLK attended during the 2024-2025 school year. == Student body ==