East Side Elementary School
Decatur, Wise County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Wise and several surrounding counties had few African American citizens. Yet regulations at the time required separate facilities for African Americans. Most African American families in Decatur lived in a neighborhood east of the Fort Worth and Denver Railway tracks. In 1882, they established East Side Elementary School, which was the only school for African American students in Wise County. The original building was a one-room frame structure built near the residence of a Mrs. Missouri Brown. Initially the facility also served as a church. It had a pot-bellied stove that the boys gathered wood for from the nearby creek. A water well was abandoned in the 1930s when it was discovered to be contaminated with oil. East Side Elementary School often inherited discarded furnishings and textbooks from Decatur's white schools. Students who completed eighth grade had to travel to Fort Worth's I.M. Terrell High School (45 miles) or Denton's Fred Moore High School (30 miles) to continue their education. In 1954, the school was replaced by a two-classroom brick building and the old frame building was used as a band hall at Decatur High School. Later, the former school served as a barn and then was moved back to its historic neighborhood. East Side Elementary School operated until segregation ended in 1965 and all students attended the same schools. Little documentation exists for Decatur's African American community. The stories of East Side Elementary School serve as reminders of the struggles and triumphs of a different time in our nation's past. (2013)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Established in 1882, East Side Elementary was the only school for African American students in Wise County, a one-room frame building near Mrs. Missouri Brown's home that also served as a church. Students warmed themselves at a pot-bellied stove and made do with furnishings and textbooks discarded by Decatur's white schools; those who finished eighth grade had to travel 30 to 45 miles to Denton or Fort Worth to continue. The school operated until desegregation in 1965.
Why it matters
East Side stands as one of the few records of Decatur's African American community and a stark local reminder of the inequities and resilience of segregated education.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Missouri Brown
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Mount Pleasant Colored School
Weatherford, TX
Built in 1919 on land donated back in 1886 by J.R. Couts, this two-room brick building served as the only school for African American children in Weatherford. Renamed Mount Pleasant Colored School in 1936, it educated Black students during the long decades of legal segregation, when separate and rarely equal facilities were the rule across Texas and the South. Later expanded with an additional frame structure, it stood as the heart of the community's educational life.
First Baptist Church of Decatur
Decatur, TX
Organized in 1856 under the Rev. J.T. Willis, this Baptist congregation first met in a Taylorsville log cabin in the town that became Decatur. By the late 1880s its pastor was preaching to both the white congregation and Decatur's African American community, and the church worked closely with the school that grew into Decatur Baptist College. Generations of pastors kept the congregation woven into the town's civic and educational life.
Quakertown
Denton, TX
In the 1880s, Quakertown grew into a thriving African American neighborhood in the heart of Denton, prospering as a self-supporting community of churches, businesses, lodges, and homes near the city square. Its very success and its nearness to the growing College of Industrial Arts made it a target: in 1921, white voters approved a bond to buy the land and convert it into a park, displacing more than 60 families with little say in the matter. By 1923 Quakertown had been erased, its residents scattered to Solomon Hill in southeast Denton or out of the city entirely.
St. Emmanuel Missionary Baptist Church
Denton, TX
St. Emmanuel began as the Second Baptist Church of Quakertown, the thriving African American community that stood in Denton from the mid-1880s until 1922. That year the city held a bond election to buy out the entire neighborhood and turn it into a park, forcing residents from their homes; the church's pastor, the Rev. J.A. Ayers, spoke out against the removal and reportedly fled town under threat. The congregation relocated to Lakey Street in 1923 and carried on its mission and community work.