Lorraine Crosby School
Hitchcock, Galveston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Opening in 1914, the Lorraine Crosby School served as an educational stepping stone for the African American children of Hitchcock. In 1903, the first school was held in the home of Louis Brown. Later, the Galilee Baptist Church offered a small annex on “Little Ben’s Farm” over the bayou and then the church auditorium. In 1910, four members of the church home missionary society discussed a more permanent home for the school near the Santa Fe Railroad. The school board agreed to build a school if the community purchased the lot. To purchase the property, citizens sponsored fish fries and other fundraisers. In 1914, the lot at 7801 Burns Street was purchased. The city built a school and it opened as Hitchcock Colored School. One notable teacher and principal of the school was Mrs. Lorraine Crosby. She instilled high standards and strength in her students and, in 1949 after her death, the school was named in her honor. By 1952, the school footprint expanded with additional facilities for the growing school and again in 1959. Prior to 1956, students wishing to continue their education in high school had to transfer to Galveston or La Marque. Even though funds were limited or non-existent for supplies and activities, staff, parents and community members helped meet the needs of the students. As a result, Lorraine Crosby School had a football team, track team, basketball team and a boy scout troop. The first graduating class was in 1960 and the last was in May 1965. In 1966, the schools integrated and the Lorraine Crosby School became a middle school for a short time. At a time when African American schools had few resources, Lorraine Crosby School was an integral part of the community and will live on in the community’s memory as their educational beginning.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The education of Hitchcock's African American children began in 1903 in a private home and a Baptist church annex, and a permanent school opened in 1914 after residents raised money through fish fries and other fundraisers to buy the lot. Long known as the Hitchcock Colored School, it was renamed in 1949 for beloved teacher and principal Lorraine Crosby. Despite scarce funding, staff and families built up sports teams and a scout troop; the school graduated classes from 1960 until integration in the mid-1960s.
Why it matters
It testifies to how Black communities under segregation built and sustained their own schools against the odds.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the first decades of the 20th century, the small Gulf Coast town of Hitchcock sat in a Texas — and a South — governed by legal segregation. Under the "separate but equal" doctrine, Black and white children learned in separate schools, but the equality almost never followed. Public dollars flowed overwhelmingly to white schools, leaving African American families to make up the difference themselves.
This was the Progressive Era, a time when the nation talked a great deal about reform, public education, and the promise of opportunity. For Black communities across the rural South, that promise came with a hard condition attached: if you wanted a school, you would largely have to build and sustain it yourself.
Hitchcock's story begins exactly there. Before any schoolhouse existed, learning happened wherever the community could make room — a private home, a church annex on a patch of farmland over the bayou, then a church auditorium. Education was less a building than a determination.
People & events
It started in 1903 in the home of Louis Brown, where the town's first classes for African American children were held. From there the effort moved to a small annex the Galilee Baptist Church offered on land locals called "Little Ben's Farm," and then into the church auditorium itself.
The turning point came in 1910, when four members of the church's home missionary society sat down to plan something more permanent, near the Santa Fe Railroad. The school board struck a bargain that speaks volumes about the era: it would build a school only if the community first bought the land. So the people of Hitchcock went to work — hosting fish fries and other fundraisers, dollar by dollar, until in 1914 they purchased the lot on Burns Street. The school opened that year.
At its heart was a teacher and principal whose name the school would eventually carry: Mrs. Lorraine Crosby. She was remembered for demanding high standards and instilling strength in her students, and after her death in 1949 the community renamed the school in her honor. Even with scarce supplies, staff and parents built up a football team, a track team, a basketball team, and a Boy Scout troop. The school graduated its first class in 1960 and its last in 1965, before integration folded it into a new chapter.
Its place in the American story
The Lorraine Crosby School is one small chapter in a vast American story: how Black communities under segregation created and sustained their own institutions when the state would not. Across the South, thousands of African American schools were built and kept alive the same way Hitchcock's was — through church basements, fundraisers, and the unpaid labor of parents who refused to let their children go untaught.
That a community could raise money through fish fries to buy land, then furnish a school the public system underfunded, is a quiet indictment of "separate but equal" and a testament to the people who endured it. These schools were more than classrooms; they were anchors of dignity, leadership, and community life.
When the schools integrated in the mid-1960s — part of the long national reckoning that followed the civil rights movement — an institution like this one closed. Honoring it now is a way of remembering both the injustice that made it necessary and the resolve that made it possible.
If you visit
Stand at the marker and picture the block not as it is now but as it was: a lot bought with the proceeds of community suppers, a school raised by people who had every reason to give up and didn't. This is a place to read slowly and think about what it cost.
Hitchcock sits in the Galveston County coastal plain, an easy detour if you're traveling between Houston and Galveston. The marker rewards a traveler who cares less about grand monuments and more about the everyday heroism of ordinary towns.
Let it be a prompt, too. Ask locally about the graduates who passed through here between 1960 and 1965 and the teachers who shaped them — community memory is the real archive of a school like this, and it lives on in the people who remember it.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Lorraine Crosby
- · Louis Brown
Related events
- · School integration
Themes & tags
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