Friona Schools
Friona, Parmer County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Friona has the distinction of being the first town in Texas to integrate its schools. The first school opened on this site in 1908 in a one-room frame building, with Roxie Witherspoon teaching 18 pupils. A two-story brick school finished in 1911 burned after being struck by lightning in 1922. A new two-story brick high school opened in 1924. Attendance grew in the 1940s, when rural schools at Lakeview, Messenger, Black and Rhea consolidated with Friona. The school achieved its greatest fame in 1954. Racial segregation of schoolchildren was considered legal in the 20th century, reaffirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896 in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. On May 17, 1954, the court overturned the decision, declaring segregation unconsitutional in Brown v. Board of Education. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote, "we conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place." Federal and state government moved slowly to implement change, but in Friona, progress would not wait. The Robert Walker, Jr. family came to town in September 1954. When Superintendent Dalton Caffey chose to enroll Walker's three African American sons in Friona's only school, he quietly achieved the first integrated public school in Texas. Caffey then informed the school board of his decision, and things generally went smoothly for the school and new students. The Walkers moved away during the school year, and in the spring of 1955 three more African American students attended school here. Since that watershed year, Friona schools have continued to uphold Caffey's wish for equal educational opportunity. (2006)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Schooling in Friona began in 1908 in a one-room frame building where Roxie Witherspoon taught 18 pupils, growing through brick schoolhouses and rural consolidations over the following decades. In September 1954—months after the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling—Superintendent Dalton Caffey quietly enrolled the three African American sons of the Robert Walker family in the town's only school, making Friona the first town in Texas to integrate. He informed the school board afterward, and the transition went smoothly.
Why it matters
Friona shows that desegregation could arrive not by court order or federal pressure but through the plain decision of local leaders to do the right thing at once.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Roxie Witherspoon
- · Dalton Caffey
- · Robert Walker, Jr.
- · Earl Warren
Related events
- · Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
- · First school integration in Texas (1954)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Mary & Mac Private School
Lubbock, TX
In 1954, educator Lucille Graves founded Mary & Mac Private School in Lubbock as a preschool for African American children, at a time when private schools for Black students were exceedingly rare. Named for a version of the hand-clapping rhyme 'Mary Mack,' the school began in a Baptist church auditorium, grew into its own building by 1961, and eventually offered classes through high school for as many as 120 students. Graves — the first African American accepted at Texas Tech — ran the school with her family until it closed in 1993, shortly after her death.
East Ward Elementary School
Borger, TX
When the oil-boom city of Borger was still unincorporated in 1926, its citizens petitioned to create an independent school district, and with no tax base yet in place local businessmen paid the teachers' salaries themselves that first year. Among the five brick buildings erected in 1927 was East Ward, a five-classroom school for 200 pupils and today the only one of that original set still standing. Renamed James Bowie Elementary in 1957, it absorbed the students of the segregated Booker T. Washington School when it closed in 1965 and became fully integrated that fall, before serving as the district's administrative center.
Hereford High School
Hereford, TX
Hereford's schools grew with the town, from a relocated frame schoolhouse in 1898 to a converted college building by 1916, until a $125,000 bond issue funded a proper new high school in 1925. Architect E. F. Rittenberry designed the three-story brick and cast-stone building in the Collegiate Gothic style, with prominent entrances and finials. It served as Hereford High until 1954 and later as a junior high and learning center.
Hereford Christian College
Hereford, TX
Hereford College opened in 1902 as a coeducational public school in a new three-story main building, but within a year financial need pushed it into the hands of the Christian Church, and it was rechristened Add-Ran College. Renamed again the next year as Panhandle Christian College, it leaned entirely on tuition and, unable to make ends meet, closed its doors in 1912. The building later served as Hereford High School, and this marker is set in brownstone salvaged from the old main structure.