Guadalupe Elementary School
San Angelo, Tom Green County, Texas
Marker Inscription
From its inception, San Angelo, like most Texas towns, struggled with "separate but equal" schools for its citizens. Separate public education began in San Angelo in 1895. By 1906 the small school for Mexican American students was filled to capacity in deteriorating conditions. Parents hired legal counsel in 1910 to request that the school board integrate the Mexican and Anglo schools. The board refused but did open an additional Mexican American school. From 1911 through the 1915 school year, the Mexican American community boycotted the public schools. By 1916 many had returned to the single remaining segregated school, but conditions again deteriorated. In 1923, due to the cooperative efforts of Mexican American parents and Mrs. Ginevra Wood Carson (1872-1958), the district opened a new brick building with four classrooms and modern facilities later known as Guadalupe Elementary School. During the Depression, Mrs. Josefa Camunez (1884-1972) opened her closed grocery store as a temporary cafeteria for Guadalupe students.In 1938 a clinic, an office and two more classrooms were added. By 1940 a kitchen was in operation at the school with meals funded by the Works Progress Administration. The San Angelo Independent School District was integrated in 1955 and Guadalupe school closed in 1959. Since that time, the structure has housed several community and civic programs such as "Head Start" and adult education. The Guadalupe Alumni(ae) Association was formed in 1992. (1998)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Like most Texas towns, San Angelo ran "separate but equal" schools, and by 1906 its overcrowded Mexican American school had deteriorated badly. Parents fought back—hiring lawyers in 1910 and boycotting the schools from 1911 to 1915—before a cooperative effort with reformer Ginevra Wood Carson produced a modern brick building in 1923 that became Guadalupe Elementary. Through the Depression, community members like Josefa Camunez kept students fed, and WPA funds later built a kitchen, until integration in 1955 led to the school's closing in 1959.
Why it matters
Guadalupe Elementary is a monument to Mexican American parents' decades-long struggle for equal education—an early, grassroots chapter of the American civil-rights story.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Ginevra Wood Carson
- · Josefa Camunez
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Knickerbocker Schools
Knickerbocker, TX
Education came early to southwestern Tom Green County, where A. P. Baze built an adobe subscription school on his farm in 1877 for children who rode in on horseback for a six-month term. As Knickerbocker grew, a frame schoolhouse replaced it about 1889, and a red-brick building with an auditorium followed in 1926. In 1895, at the urging of Dr. Boyd Cornick, a separate county school was built for children of Mexican descent; the two schools ran apart until they combined in 1948, and area schools consolidated to Christoval in 1960.
Little Mexico (Northeast Junction)
Junction, TX
Separated from the rest of Junction by the Llano River, the neighborhood long known as Little Mexico grew from land Mexican American families bought in the 1920s along the route of the Old Spanish Trail. For decades the community went without city amenities and school buses, its children walking miles across the river bridge to class, while two churches and a cemetery of its own anchored its life. Though the building of Interstate 10 displaced many residents, the community endured and kept its culture alive.
Castell School
Castell, TX
Schooling in the German settlement of Castell may reach back to 1852 by local tradition, but the written record begins in 1884, when Llano County designated it School District No. 6. The community built a two-room schoolhouse, expanded to three rooms in 1929, that taught ten grades — students finished high school in Llano, Fredericksburg, or Mason. Declining enrollment closed the school in 1948, after which the building lived on as a community center.
Site of Prairie Mountain School
Llano vicinity, TX
German immigrants and pioneer settlers built the community once called Starks in the mid-1800s, and in 1906 a nearby school was relocated here and renamed Prairie Mountain School. The one-room schoolhouse doubled as a place of worship, a pattern common in thinly settled country, and a larger building followed in 1924. The school served until district consolidation in 1948, and the building lived on as a community center for decades more.