Nicolas Street School
Uvalde, Uvalde County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Nicolas Street School, built in 1938, is the only surviving school to tell the story of African-American education in Uvalde. Mrs. T. B. "Susie" Harris, who came to Uvalde to teach at the Oak Street School in 1912, was integral in the establishment of Nicolas Street School. By 1937, increasing enrollment led the Uvalde school board to apply for federal aid to build three new buildings, two for Mexican-American students and one for Anglo students. Although they had originally promised new facilities for African-American students, the board instead decided to transfer the students to one of the older school buildings. Mrs. Harris wrote to U.S. Vice-President John Nance Garner, a Uvalde resident, asking for his assistance in obtaining a new campus. The board later received a telegram from the vice-president in support of Mrs. Harris. In 1938, the board approved the purchase of land on Nicolas Street for a new school. In a time of segregated but seldom equal facilities, the Nicolas Street School contributed significantly to the education of local African-American children. San Antonio architect Will Noonan designed and Uvalde contractor Robert Holcomb built the rectangular, single story brick schoolhouse with metal hipped roof, open eaves and exposed rafters. Two teachers, Mrs. Harris and Mrs. Jewel Kinchlow, taught eight grades here. Mrs. Kinchlow, a former student of Mrs. Harris, later became principal of Nicolas Street School until 1956. Although the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District voted to integrate public schools in 1955, Nicolas Street School remained in operation until 1965, when the school board transferred ownership of the property to the City of Uvalde. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2011
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1938, the Nicolas Street School is the last surviving school telling the story of African American education in Uvalde. Its creation owed much to teacher Susie Harris, who — after the school board reneged on promised new facilities for Black students — wrote directly to Uvalde resident and U.S. Vice President John Nance Garner for help, and won a new campus. In an era of "separate but seldom equal" schooling, two teachers taught eight grades here, and the school served the community until 1965, a full decade after the district voted to integrate.
Why it matters
The schoolhouse is a tangible record of both the injustice of segregated education and the determination of Black educators and families to secure decent schooling for their children.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1930s, Uvalde was a small ranching and farming town in the South Texas brush country, and like the rest of Texas it ran its schools under the rigid rules of segregation. Black children, Mexican-American children, and Anglo children were educated separately, in buildings and with resources that were rarely equal. The phrase of the era was "separate but equal," but the reality on the ground almost never lived up to the second half of that promise.
This was also the tail end of the Great Depression, when federal dollars were beginning to flow into local communities through New Deal programs. Small towns across the country applied for aid to build schools, roads, and public buildings. That federal money is the backdrop to this story: it was the prize the Uvalde school board was chasing when it applied for help to construct new campuses, and it was the leverage that would decide whether Black students got a real school or a cast-off building.
Against this landscape, a single teacher's determination changed what would otherwise have been a familiar outcome. The wider currents of the New Deal and Jim Crow met here, on a plot of land on Nicolas Street, and left behind a brick schoolhouse that still stands.
People & events
The heart of this story is Mrs. T. B. "Susie" Harris, who arrived in Uvalde in 1912 to teach at the Oak Street School and spent decades building an education for the town's Black children. When the school board applied for federal aid in the late 1930s to construct new buildings, its plans favored Mexican-American and Anglo students, and the promised new facilities for African-American children quietly became a plan to shuffle them into one of the older, worn buildings instead.
Mrs. Harris refused to let the promise be broken. She wrote directly to a powerful neighbor: John Nance Garner, a Uvalde resident who was then Vice President of the United States. Whatever Garner said in reply, the board soon received a telegram from the Vice President backing her cause, and in 1938 it approved the purchase of land on Nicolas Street for a new school. San Antonio architect Will Noonan designed the trim brick building, and Uvalde contractor Robert Holcomb built it.
Inside, two teachers carried the whole load. Mrs. Harris and Mrs. Jewel Kinchlow taught all eight grades between them. Kinchlow's path is its own quiet tribute to Harris: she had once been Harris's student, and she went on to become the school's principal until 1956. The building kept teaching local children until 1965, a full decade after the district had voted, in 1955, to integrate its public schools.
Its place in the American story
The Nicolas Street School is a small, sturdy piece of a very large American story: the long struggle over who gets a decent education and who decides. Across the segregated South and Southwest, Black communities and Black educators fought constantly for schools that were more than hand-me-downs, often winning better facilities not through courts but through sheer persistence and local pressure. This schoolhouse is that fight made visible in brick and mortar.
It also captures a lesser-told truth about the New Deal era: federal money meant to lift communities was distributed through local boards that could, and often did, reproduce the inequalities of their time. That a school got built for Black children here at all owed less to the fairness of the system than to one woman who knew how to use the one lever available to her.
And the dates matter. The nation would not fully confront school segregation until the landmark court decisions of the mid-1950s, yet the everyday work of teaching, advocating, and simply keeping a school open had been going on for decades before that. Places like this remind us that the civil rights story was carried, day by day, by teachers whose names rarely made the history books.
If you visit
Look first at the building itself. It is a modest, single-story brick schoolhouse with a metal hipped roof, open eaves, and exposed rafters — plain, honest architecture built to last, and it has. As the only surviving school that tells the story of African-American education in Uvalde, it carries a weight far larger than its size.
Stand for a moment and picture the scale of what happened inside: two teachers, eight grades, one community's children. That intimacy is the point. This was not a grand institution but a place where a handful of dedicated adults gave everything they had to the students in front of them.
If you're building a road trip through South Texas, Uvalde sits in the brush country west of San Antonio, and this marker pairs naturally with the region's layered history of ranching, immigration, and civil rights. Come here to remember that some of the most important American history happened not in capitals but in small towns, decided by people who simply would not take no for an answer.
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
- · Susie Harris
- · Jewel Kinchlow
- · John Nance Garner
- · Will Noonan
- · Robert Holcomb
Themes & tags
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