Barefield School
Refugio, Refugio County, Texas
Marker Inscription
African Americans were denied access to education while enslaved, but opportunities emerged after emancipation. The first African American school in Refugio was held in a shotgun building on the corner of Santiago and Osage Streets. The school, known as the Refugio Colored School, later moved to the corner of Alamo and King Streets. The school had no running water so the boys carried water from Osage Street for drinking purposes. The students also found and cut firewood during the winter months to heat the school and were responsible for maintenance of the building. In 1927, the school burned. Professor A.T. Barefield arranged for classes to be held at the Bob Button Dance Hall and then at Mount Pilgrim Baptist Church. Beginning in 1917, Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears Roebuck Company, began to provide matching funds for African American schools in the south. By 1929, a new two-room stucco building was erected on East Commons Street through the Rosenwald school building program. The school was later named Barefield School after professor A.T. Barefield, an educator in Refugio from 1902 to 1949, who promoted education and good citizenship within the black community. As attendance grew, the board of trustees approved to move one of the two-room buildings from the white school to the Negro school grounds. The Rosenwald School no longer exists but the 1933 addition still stands at commons and bayou streets. The Barefield School was the only Rosenwald School in Refugio County and was a symbol of vision and progress for the community during the early 1900s. (2013)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Barred from schooling under slavery, Refugio's African American community built its own after emancipation, first in a rented shotgun house where students hauled their own water and cut firewood to heat the room. After fire destroyed an early school in 1927, classes met in a dance hall and a church until a two-room stucco building rose in 1929 through the Rosenwald program, which matched local funds for Black schools across the South. The school was later named for A.T. Barefield, an educator here from 1902 to 1949.
Why it matters
As the only Rosenwald school in Refugio County, Barefield embodies the national partnership that built thousands of schools for Black children in the segregated South, and the communities who sustained them.
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Related people
- · A.T. Barefield
- · Julius Rosenwald
Themes & tags
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