L. C. Anderson High School and Integration of Austin's Public Schools
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
To accommodate an increasing African American population, the Austin Public School system (later the AISD) built E.H. Anderson High School in 1909, renaming it L.C. Anderson High School in 1938. The same year, the Austin City Plan restricted construction of future African American schools to the segregated neighborhood east of East Avenue. Post-war population growth and the need to improve its "separate but equal" facilities led AISD in 1953 to build a larger, more modern building for Anderson High School. L.C. Anderson High School became a social center for the entire community, hosting athletics, plays, concerts, and graduations, and despite its disadvantages, the students excelled in academics, athletics, and music. In 1955, the U.S. Supreme Court's second Brown v. Board of Education decision ordered schools nationwide to desegregate "with all deliberate speed." Austin implemented a "freedom of choice" program, allowing students to choose where they attended school, but in 1968, the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare declared AISD noncompliant with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1969, AISD attempted to integrate Anderson, but only 17 white students enrolled. In 1971, when a U.S. district court redrew attendance boundaries, only 40 white students attended, as many white parents would not allow their children to attend Anderson. In 1971, AISD, with the court's approval, closed Anderson High School and ordered the busing of African American students to predominantly white high schools within the district. The closure of L.C. Anderson High School at this location, Austin's only Black public high school, diminished the cohesiveness which made the historic L.C. Anderson High School such a focal point for the surrounding community. (2018)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in 1909 to serve Austin's growing African American community, L.C. Anderson High School became the heart of segregated East Austin—a place that, despite unequal resources, produced excellence in academics, athletics, and music. After Brown v. Board of Education, the district's "freedom of choice" plan left the school effectively segregated, and by 1971 a federal court's remedy meant closing Anderson and busing its Black students to white schools across the city. The shuttering of Austin's only Black public high school tore out a community's anchor even as it advanced integration.
Why it matters
It lays bare the painful paradox of desegregation, which too often dismantled the very Black institutions that had sustained a community.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Old Anderson High School, Kealing Junior High School
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Austin's first high school for Black students opened in 1884 as Robertson Hill School and, through several moves and renamings, became L. C. Anderson High School, honoring a longtime principal. Kealing Junior High, the city's first junior high for Black students, opened on this site in 1930, named for educator Hightower Theodore Kealing, and later merged with the Anderson buildings. The schools here closed in 1971 under court-ordered desegregation, and the old buildings were later razed or lost to fire.
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