Alonzo Marion Story
Palestine, Anderson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Alonzo Marion Story Alonzo Marion Story (1882-1966) was born in New Orleans to parents John and Mary Story. He attended public schools and graduated from Louisiana's Leland College before doing post-graduate work in Texas and Colorado. Story came to Texas at the age of 21 and taught mathematics in Midway. He also served as a mail clerk before moving in 1912 to Palestine, where he taught math at Lincoln High School, the school for African American students. He taught there until 1917, when he moved to Austin to be principal of the state's Deaf, Dumb and Blind Institute for African Americans. In 1924, Story was offered a job as principal in Dallas. Instead, he returned to Palestine's Lincoln High School, where he taught math and served as principal. Beloved and respected, Story stayed until retiring in 1949, teaching his last years with no eyesight. After retirement, he tutored from his home. In 1953, the school district opened a new facility and named it Alonzo Marion Story High School in honor of the revered educator. After desegregation, the school became a junior high and then an elementary school before being destroyed by a tornado in 1987. In 1990, the district built a new school named for him. Story dedicated his life to education. In addition to his roles as teacher and principal, he was director of religious education at West Union Baptist Church and served on the executive committee of the Texas State Teachers Association and as vice president of the East Texas Teachers Association. His immeasurable contributions to Palestine are reflected in the community's commemoration of his life. (2002)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born in New Orleans and college-educated, Alonzo Marion Story came to Texas young and devoted his life to teaching mathematics, settling in Palestine in 1912 to instruct students at the town's school for African American children. He served for decades as teacher and principal, staying on through his final years even after losing his eyesight, and continued tutoring from home after retiring. The community named schools in his honor, a testament to a man revered across the era of segregated education.
Why it matters
His career illuminates the profound role of dedicated Black educators who built opportunity for their communities under segregation.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Alonzo Marion Story was born in New Orleans in 1882, as Reconstruction was ending and the Jim Crow era was beginning across the South. In the decades that followed, Southern states, Louisiana and Texas among them, built a legal system of racial segregation that touched nearly every part of daily life. Schools were divided too.
Under that system, Black communities were left to educate their children with far fewer resources than white schools received. Separate schools were rarely equal in funding, buildings or supplies. What they often did have were dedicated teachers and principals, many of them graduates of the Black colleges founded after the Civil War, who saw education as the surest road to dignity and opportunity.
Palestine, the seat of Anderson County in East Texas, was a railroad town with an established African American community. Lincoln High School was its school for Black students. Schools like Lincoln were often the center of Black community life, closely tied to the churches and civic groups that supported them.
Story's long career ran from the early twentieth century through the years after World War II, nearly the whole span of legal school segregation. He retired in 1949. A few years later, in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregated public schools unconstitutional, beginning the long and uneven process of desegregation that would change the schools he had served.
People & events
Story was the son of John and Mary Story. He went to public schools in New Orleans and graduated from Leland College in Louisiana, then did post-graduate study in Texas and Colorado. He came to Texas at 21 and taught mathematics in Midway. For a time he also worked as a mail clerk, one of the steady public jobs open to educated Black men in that era.
In 1912 he moved to Palestine to teach math at Lincoln High School. Five years later, in 1917, he went to Austin as principal of the state's institute for deaf and blind African American students. It was a demanding post serving young people who faced both disability and racial discrimination.
The defining choice of his life came in 1924. Offered a principal's job in Dallas, a bigger city and almost certainly a bigger stage, he turned it down and came back to Lincoln High School in Palestine, where he taught math and served as principal. He stayed for a quarter of a century, until 1949. In his last years there he taught without his eyesight, and after he retired he kept tutoring students at home.
His work went well beyond the classroom. He was director of religious education at West Union Baptist Church, served on the executive committee of the Texas State Teachers Association, and was vice president of the East Texas Teachers Association. In 1953 the school district named a new school Alonzo Marion Story High School. After desegregation it became a junior high and later an elementary school, until a tornado destroyed it in 1987. In 1990 the district built a new school and gave it his name again.
Its place in the American story
Alonzo Marion Story belongs to a generation of Black educators whose work is one of the great untold stories of American history. Under segregation, teachers and principals like him built strong schools with limited resources. They sent students into the professions, the trades, the military and the civil rights movement. Much of what Black Americans achieved in the twentieth century started in classrooms like his.
His career also shows the wider network of Black education. He trained at a Black college founded after emancipation, worked for a state institution serving deaf and blind African American students, and helped lead teachers' associations at the state and regional level. These institutions formed a professional world of their own, and it supported Black communities through decades of discrimination.
What happened to his namesake school shows how complicated desegregation was. The school opened in 1953 as a high school for Black students. After integration it became a junior high and then an elementary school, and later it was destroyed by a tornado. In many Southern towns, desegregation brought the closing or repurposing of beloved Black schools, so communities gained access to schools that had been closed to them but lost institutions they had built. Palestine chose to put his name on a new school, which kept his memory part of the town's shared life.
Above all, Story's life is about commitment. He turned down advancement to stay with the students and community he served, kept teaching after losing his sight, and tutored after he retired. That kind of devotion runs through the history of American education, and markers like this make sure it is remembered.
If you visit
This marker honors a person, not a building, so a visit here is mostly about reflection. Take a moment to think about a teacher who chose this town over a bigger city and stayed for twenty-five years, finishing his career teaching mathematics without his sight.
If you are traveling with children or teenagers, this is a good stop for a conversation. Ask them what it would take to keep teaching after going blind, or why someone might turn down a promotion to stay where they were needed. It is also a natural way to start talking about segregated schools and the teachers who served students well within them.
Palestine is an East Texas county seat with a long railroad history and a historic downtown that is worth a stroll. While you are in town, think about the institutions the marker mentions, Lincoln High School, West Union Baptist Church and the schools that carried Story's name, as threads in the fabric of the town's African American community.
Palestine fits well into a road trip through the Piney Woods and the small towns of East Texas. Pair this stop with other markers on African American history and education in the region to see how communities across Texas built opportunity under hard circumstances.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
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Themes & tags
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