 The school opened as a school only for African-Americans; it was desegregated by 1970.Beginning in 1988 Chase Enterprises subsidiary Rangers Insurance Co. assigned employees to tutor Ryan students, funded school supplies and computers for Ryan, and established a scholarship/endowment fund to provide vocational training and/or university educations to Ryan alumni who abstained from recreational drugs, did not get into legal trouble, and graduated from high school; from 1992 to 1999 166 eligible Ryan alumni benefited from the scholarship.Annually the company deposited $150,000 into the scholarship/endowment fund.