Plans for the school, originally the Woodrow Wilson High School, existed as early as 1930, to relieve crowding in
Jamaica High School. The school's building opened in 1942 as Woodrow Wilson Vocational High School. Quotes from former President
Woodrow Wilson still adorn the school building's facade. Initially it trained thousands of people to join defense-related industries during
World War II, although it was planned in 1940, prior to the nation's entry into the war. Woodrow Wilson closed in 1971 when August Martin High School opened in the same building. The primary goal of the new school was to train
African Americans to enter the aviation industry. The school's namesake,
August Martin (1919-1968), was trained as a military pilot during World War II as one of the
Tuskegee Airmen, and after the war became the first African American commercial airline
pilot. Martin graduated from
DeWitt Clinton High School in the
Bronx in 1938 and lived in
New York City for much of his life. He died in 1968 when the plane he was piloting crashed during a
humanitarian relief mission to the
Biafra region of
Nigeria. In 2012, neighborhood residents, elected officials, and students protested a plan to close August Martin High School, considered to be under-performing by the New York City Department of Education's leadership, and open new schools in the same building under different names. This practice had been followed previously at other schools around the city. The protesters stressed the importance of the name to the community. As of 2015, the school continues to operate as August Martin High School, and this name is still prominently engraved over the door, although the building also hosts two smaller high schools that use different names. ==Notable alumni==