Fred Douglass School
Jacksonville, Cherokee County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Named after prominent African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, the Fred Douglass School was a 20th century African American educational institution in Jacksonville. Because of Jim Crow, the system of laws that legalized segregation, African Americans had to attend separate schools. In the 1900s, the "Little Red School House" was one of the first African American schools in Jacksonville. When the school burned down in 1921, J.H. Howard, the principal, directed the construction of the Fred Douglass School. First built in 1922 on Elberta Street, the original Fred Douglass School was funded partially by the Rosenwald Foundation, which gave money to construct African American schools in rural areas in the South. The building consisted of six classrooms, a principal's office, book room and auditorium. M.B. Davis served as the first principal from 1924-1956 with H.V. Jones serving as principal from 1956-1970. In 1930, M.C. Wade negotiated with the all-white Jacksonville school board to allocate funds for a larger Fred Douglass School in Lincoln Park. To accommodate the growing student population, the school moved from its Elberta Street location to the Lincoln Park Addition, which contained more classrooms and a larger auditorium. The school expanded again with the construction of another building located on Gaston Street named Fred Douglass High School. Students attended the school until 1970 when African American students were fully integrated into Jacksonville schools. After integration, the school sat empty until it burned down in 1979. The Fred Douglass School not only represented the systems of inequality used in the Jim Crow South, but also how Jacksonville's African American community built educational opportunities for their children. (2018)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Named for the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, this Jacksonville school served African American children through the era of Jim Crow segregation. After an earlier school burned in 1921, principal J.H. Howard led construction of the Fred Douglass School in 1922, partly funded by the Rosenwald Foundation, which backed Black schools across the rural South. As enrollment grew the school moved to Lincoln Park and later added a high school, educating the community's children until integration finally reached Jacksonville in 1970.
Why it matters
It embodies both the injustice of segregated "separate but equal" schooling and the determination of a Black community to build real educational opportunity for its children.
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Related people
- · Frederick Douglass
- · J.H. Howard
- · M.B. Davis
Related events
- · Rosenwald school construction
- · 1970 integration of Jacksonville schools
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Rusk Public School No. 2 for African Americans
Rusk, TX
By 1884 Rusk's public schools were split by race, with the segregated No. 2 school for African American children meeting in a small frame house built here around 1895. In 1939 a larger school rose southeast of downtown, later named for its long-serving principal G. W. Bradford, and it educated Black students until Rusk integrated in the 1960s. Despite meager resources, the school sent many graduates into respected professions.
Jacksonville Independent School District
Jacksonville, TX
Jacksonville's settlers prized learning early, running a school by 1846 at the original townsite. After residents relocated near the railroad in 1872, they built the town's first public school the next year, and between 1905 and 1907 the city formed its own district with separate campuses for white and Black students. Those schools integrated in the late 1960s, and the district has since sent Olympic athletes, Grammy winners, and Tony nominees into the world.
Pine Grove School
Jacksonville vicinity, TX
Pine Grove School was serving African American students in rural Cherokee County by at least 1885, with a single teacher handling every grade in a community schoolhouse. After World War I, a growing enrollment led the community to secure aid from the Julius Rosenwald Fund, completing a two-teacher schoolhouse in 1926 that was enlarged to four teachers by the mid-1930s. The school produced many successful graduates and operated as a segregated institution until it closed in 1968 and merged with the New Hope district.
Elm Grove Common School
Ponta, TX
Elm Grove was a Freedmen's community — settled by formerly enslaved people after emancipation — and by 1884 it had a place in the Cherokee County school system. Classes first met in a local church and in homes until the 1890s, when residents built a one-room schoolhouse on land donated by R.B. and Caroline Wood, raising it with their own donated materials. A 1917 merger swelled enrollment and the interior was divided into three rooms, until the school closed and consolidated with Rusk in 1957.