Birthplace of Harvey Means
Teague, Freestone County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(1868-1943) Noted Negro civic leader and barber to two generations of prominent Texans. An adventurous youth, Means began work at age 18 as shoe-shine boy in a west Texas barber shop. When rowdy cowboys demanded haircuts one day, Means (though inexperienced) complied with their wishes, and thus began a 54-year career. His last 31 years were spent in Fort Worth, where he helped establish a hospital and city park for black citizens. He led in civic, religious, and fraternal affairs and worked continually to improve race relations. His 10 children all attended college.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Harvey Means began at eighteen as a shoe-shine boy in a West Texas barber shop and, pressed one day by rowdy cowboys, picked up the shears and launched a fifty-four-year career. Settling in Fort Worth, he became a respected civic leader among Black Texans, helping to establish a hospital and a city park for the Black community and working steadily to improve race relations. He raised ten children, all of whom went on to college.
Why it matters
His life is a portrait of Black institution-building and quiet leadership in the segregated South, where a barber's chair became a base for winning hospitals, parks, and opportunity for a community the state left unserved.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Harvey Means
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Groesbeck Independent School District
Groesbeck, TX
Groesbeck was founded in 1871 and opened Groesbeck College months later; by 1881 trustees had bought land for the education of African American children, and in 1886 the county turned the former college property into the town's first free public school. Voters incorporated for school purposes in 1890, creating the Groesbeck Independent School District, which by 1892 ran separate buildings for white and Black students. Over the following decades rural schools consolidated into the district, integration was completed by 1969, and traditions from the Goat mascot to the ex-students association took root.
Booker T. Washington Park
Mexia, TX
Set aside by deed in 1898, this park was dedicated to celebrating June 19th — Juneteenth — the day in 1865 when enslaved Texans learned of their freedom, first announced just a few miles south of here. Limestone County's Black community produced notable Reconstruction-era leaders, including constitutional convention delegate Ralph Long and legislators Giles Cotton, Dave Medlock, and Sheppard Mullins. Crowds of up to 20,000 once gathered for the annual observance, chartered under the 19th of June Organization in 1912.
Dogan High School
Fairfield, TX
Fairfield's first public school for Black children opened in 1926 on a one-acre plot beside the First Baptist Church, whose sanctuary doubled as a classroom as enrollment grew. In 1934 the community petitioned to move the school to this site and soon added the high-school courses that let it become a full institution, renamed Dogan High School for Wiley College president Dr. Matthew Dogan, Sr. Under principals like Randolph Titus, who led the school from 1936 to 1968, Dogan built a proud record — its Wildcat basketball teams reached the state finals four times — and sent alumni into medicine, law, ministry, and education before integrating in 1968.
Furney Richardson High School
Teague, TX
In 1933, at the depths of the Depression, trustees of the Busby and Grove Island schools joined forces to create a single district for African-American children in western Freestone County. On land acquired from the Albert Wright family, the campus opened that fall—named for its first superintendent, Furney Richardson—offering classes through high school, and a small rural community of businesses grew up around it. A leading Black school for decades, it lost its high school to Teague in 1958 and fully merged a decade later, after which the schoolhouse lived on as a community and reunion center.