An educator and pastor, Henderson Hollowell Dunn devoted his life to uplifting the Black community in New Orleans.
He started a preschool for Black children in 1911 while serving as the pastor of Central Congregational Church.
Known as the Isabella Hume Child Development Center, it is “one of the oldest pre-school education centers designed to serve African American children in the South and probably in the country,” the website states. “Dunn recognized the pressing need of Black families to have a safe place to leave their children while they worked.”
Originally called the Colored Day Nursery, the center opened in Central’s basement before moving in 1931 to the Daniel Hand School Building at Straight College. The name was changed in 1954 to honor Hume, who was Central’s assistant pastor and a Straight instructor. She started a community program to assist Black mothers.

Dunn, whose father was formerly enslaved, was born in 1872 in Thibodaux, La. He received his first bachelor’s degree in 1900 and a Bachelor of Divinity in 1904. Then he taught school and was pastor at Morris Brown Congregational Church in New Orleans.
Serving as Central’s pastor from 1906-1924, Dunn resigned to become regional secretary of the Congregational Churches in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas.
In 1925, according to the Creole Genealogical and Historical Association, Dunn and other Black leaders founded the Colored Educational Alliance,” and lobbied the school board for funding for Black schools, which were overcrowded and in disrepair.
In addition to his other accomplishments, Dunn wrote Black religious and educational news for the Times-Picayune. He also directed the newspaper’s Doll and Toy Fund, which helped low-income families during the Christmas season.
Dunn was 82 when he died in 1955. The school board dedicated an elementary school in his name in 1958.
For more tales from New Orleans history, visit the Back in the Day archives.