Gregory School
Houston, Harris County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1865, as the reality of Emancipation spread across Texas, many formerly enslaved African Americans left plantations and other places of bondage in search of a better life. Some established “Freedmen’s Town” near Buffalo Bayou in Houston’s Fourth Ward. The Freedmen’s Bureau and the American Missionary Association worked with the Black community to establish schools in three early churches. Adults and children were taught in the same classes by White teachers. Houston’s first purpose-built school for Blacks was the 1870 Gregory Institute, named for E.M. Gregory, a Freedmen’s Bureau official. Black trustees Richard Allen, Rev. Elias Dibble, Peter Noble, Rev. Sandy Parker and William Waff raised money for the private school, located in a two-story brick building on Jefferson Avenue at Louisiana Street. In 1876, it became part of Houston’s public school system, with Black teachers. In 1877, Henry C. Hardy became the school’s first Black principal. The school relocated to this site in a new wooden building in 1903. Overcrowding, neglect, and fire damage led to the 1926 construction of this two-story, 20,000-square-foot brick building, renamed the Gregory School. The new facility continued educating Black students to prosper within a segregated society. The Houston ISD officially closed the school in 1980, citing low enrollment and a deteriorating structure. The site has been an educational, social and cultural anchor for the community for generations. Its historical and architectural significance is reflected in the site’s 1985 listing in the National Register of Historic Places and its 1995 State Antiquities Landmark designation. Rededicated in 2009 as The African American Library at the Gregory School, it continues to preserve and promote the rich history and culture of Houston’s Black community. (2019)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
As word of Emancipation spread through Texas in 1865, freed African Americans built Freedmen's Town near Buffalo Bayou in Houston's Fourth Ward. With help from the Freedmen's Bureau and missionaries, the community founded the Gregory Institute in 1870—the city's first purpose-built school for Black children—which joined the public system in 1876 and gained its first Black principal a year later. Rebuilt in brick in 1926, the Gregory School educated generations until 1980 and now anchors an African American library.
Why it matters
From a Reconstruction freedmen's academy to a National Register landmark, the school embodies Black Houston's century-long fight to educate its children within and against a segregated society.
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Related people
- · Henry C. Hardy
- · Richard Allen
Related events
- · Emancipation in Texas
Themes & tags
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