N. A. Banks Elementary School
Palestine, Anderson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Established in 1912, N.A. Banks Elementary School served African-American children of Palestine's South End Community. Initially the school served grades one through four and was named for the principle of Palestine's Lincoln High School. Nathaniel A. Banks (1854-1930) had great influence on the African-American community of Palestine, serving as Lincoln High School principal from 1898 to 1907. He also organized the area's Colored Summer Normal School, which prepared African-American teachers in ten surrounding counties for the State Teaching Certification Exam. Hundreds attended each summer from 1899 until about 1919, even after Banks left Palestine and the teaching profession to become a farmer. The Banks School was a two-story brick building with four classrooms. When it opened, it was the first elementary school for African-American students living south of the I&GN railroad tracks in Palestine. J.A.B. Strain was the first principal. He and teachers Alma Johnson-Stein, Leonora Howard-Robinson and Louise Scott-Updack each taught here for more than 35 years. The school added fifth and sixth grades and additional teachers in 1949, though in 1953 these grades moved to the Lincoln High School campus when the new A.M. Story High School opened. Twice a year, the school hosted meetings of the City Teachers' Association, an organization of African-American teachers. In May 1965, the Palestine School Board closed Banks School in accordance with desegregation guidelines. The facility operated as the Palestine Kindergarten Center under the federally-funded Headstart Program for an additional five years. The building was razed in the early 1980s. Today Banks School is remembered as the educational foundation for many in Palestine and a source of community pride.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Established in 1912, Banks Elementary was the first school for African-American children living south of the I&GN tracks in Palestine's South End. It honored Nathaniel A. Banks, the Lincoln High principal who ran a summer 'normal school' that trained Black teachers from ten surrounding counties for state certification. Several of its teachers stayed more than 35 years each, and after desegregation closed the school in 1965 the building served five more years as a federal Head Start center.
Why it matters
Banks School shows how a single dedicated educator's influence rippled outward — training the teachers who staffed a whole region's segregated schools — and how such community anchors were repurposed even as segregation ended.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
At the dawn of the 20th century, in the era historians call the Progressive age, American cities were growing and formalizing their public school systems. For African American communities in the South, that growth unfolded under the hard rule of segregation: separate schools, and almost always unequal funding. Getting a new school built for Black children was rarely a gift handed down — it was something a community worked and pushed for.
One of the deepest challenges was simply finding enough qualified teachers. Training and certifying Black educators required its own institutions, because the doors of many established teacher-training programs were closed to them. So communities built "normal schools" — summer training programs that prepared teachers to pass state certification exams and then fan out to staff the region's segregated classrooms.
The school honored here opened in 1912 to serve a specific, growing part of town — the neighborhood south of the railroad tracks that cut through the city. Its founding reflects both the reach of segregation, which shaped even where children could go to school, and the determination of a community that insisted its youngest residents deserved a solid place to begin.
People & events
The school opened in 1912 serving grades one through four, and it was named for a man whose influence on the local African American community ran deep. Nathaniel A. Banks had served as principal of the town's Lincoln High School from 1898 to 1907, but his greatest legacy may have been the area's Colored Summer Normal School, which he organized to prepare Black teachers across ten surrounding counties for the state certification exam. Hundreds came each summer from 1899 until about 1919 — even after Banks himself left teaching to become a farmer.
The school named in his honor was a two-story brick building with four classrooms, and when it opened it was the first elementary school for African American students living south of the railroad tracks. J.A.B. Strain served as its first principal, and it drew teachers of extraordinary staying power: Alma Johnson-Stein, Leonora Howard-Robinson, and Louise Scott-Updack each taught there for more than thirty-five years.
The school grew and adapted with the times. It added fifth and sixth grades and more teachers in 1949, then shifted those upper grades to another campus in 1953 when a new high school opened. Like other Black schools in town, it hosted twice-yearly meetings of an association of African American teachers. In May 1965 the school board closed it under desegregation guidelines — but the building found new purpose, serving five more years as a federally funded Head Start kindergarten center before being razed in the early 1980s.
Its place in the American story
This school's story shows how the influence of a single dedicated educator could ripple across an entire region. Through his summer normal school, one principal helped train the teachers who then staffed segregated classrooms in ten counties — a multiplier effect that shaped the education of countless children far beyond any one town. It's a vivid illustration of how, under segregation, Black communities grew their own teachers because the wider system would not.
The school itself reflects a national pattern in which even neighborhoods were divided by infrastructure. Being "south of the tracks" was more than a location; across America, railroad lines often marked the boundary between communities, and a school built specifically to serve the children on one side of them speaks to how thoroughly segregation organized daily life.
Its final chapter connects to two big national movements at once. Its closing in 1965 was part of the long, uneven process of desegregation set in motion by the civil rights movement. And its second life as a Head Start center ties it to the federal War on Poverty of the 1960s, when early-childhood programs opened in communities across the country — so that a building born of segregation ended its days serving one of the era's most hopeful national experiments.
If you visit
The building is gone now, cleared decades ago, but this site rewards a thoughtful pause. Picture a two-story brick schoolhouse of four classrooms anchoring the neighborhood south of the tracks — the first of its kind for the children who lived there.
Read the marker with an eye for the people who gave the school its staying power. Notice the teachers who each stayed more than thirty-five years; that kind of devotion is what turned a building into an institution, and it tells you how much the community and its educators poured into this place.
If you're touring the town's African American history, let this stop and its companion markers speak to each other. Together they map how a community trained its own teachers, built schools on both sides of the railroad, and adapted its buildings to new eras — right down to this one's final years as an early-childhood center. It's a quiet lot today, but it holds a story of resilience, pride, and the long reach of a single educator's example.
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
- · Nathaniel A. Banks
- · J.A.B. Strain
Related events
- · Closure under desegregation guidelines, 1965
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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Palestine's first high school for African American students opened in 1891 in a mission church, moving to this site in 1895 as Lincoln High School, with its first class graduating in 1896. Rebuilt in brick after a 1922 fire, the growing school became a cultural anchor for the Black community. It served as a junior high after 1953 and closed in 1965 when the city's schools integrated, remaining a community center until a 1996 fire led to its demolition.
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Born in 1902 to a father who had escaped slavery, Timothy Stephen Smith earned a degree from Prairie View A&M and taught school for forty-two years. Convinced that Anderson County's voting boundaries diluted Black political strength, he and others sued in 1973; Judge William Wayne Justice agreed, striking down a "racially motivated gerrymander" and forcing a switch to single-member districts. Similar success against the City of Palestine soon followed, opening the way for the county's first Black officeholders.
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