Paris Public Schools
Paris, Lamar County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Although attempts to provide a public school system in Paris were made as early as 1877, it was not until 1884 that the system as it is known today was organized. Under the strong leadership of Mayor John C. Gibbons, W. B. Aikin, E. L. Dohoney, and Travis Henderson, the city council appointed a board of trustees to supervise the first full session of the newly organized school system. Three schools comprised the system in 1884. The Aikin Institute, later known as Aikin High School and as Paris High School, was located at this site. The second facility was the Graham School, originally known as the Paris Female Institute. A school for black students was located on North Jefferson Street in 1884. It later was moved to another site and was named Gibbons High School in honor of the former mayor. J. C. Brooks of Tennessee served as first superintendent of Paris Public Schools. A later superintendent, J. G. Wooten, served for 37 years and was responsible for much improvement and expansion, including the 1924 addition of Paris Junior College, which remained part of the public school system until 1949. Through its years of growth and development, the Paris Public Schools have educated and influenced thousands of students throughout the community.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Paris organized its modern public school system in 1884 after earlier efforts, when civic leaders and Mayor John C. Gibbons appointed a board of trustees. Three schools opened that year, among them a school for Black students that later became Gibbons High School. Under long-serving superintendent J. G. Wooten the system expanded, even absorbing Paris Junior College from 1924 to 1949.
Why it matters
It captures the rise of tax-supported public education in a small Texas city — including, under segregation, the separate schooling provided to Black children.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the decades after the Civil War, the idea that a town should tax itself to educate all of its children was still new and unevenly realized across the American South. Texas was a largely rural, agricultural state during the Reconstruction and Gilded Age years, and public schooling often lagged behind the ambitions of the people who championed it. A community had to organize a system, fund it, and staff it before children could reliably fill its classrooms.
Paris sits in the northeastern corner of Texas, and by the 1880s it was a growing county seat with a civic class eager to give itself the trappings of a modern town. A permanent, tax-supported school system was one of those markers of arrival. An early attempt in 1877 shows the appetite was there well before the structure caught up.
That gap between wanting a school system and actually running one is the real backdrop here. It took organized leadership, a governing board, and dedicated buildings before Paris could say it had a public school system in the sense we would recognize today.
People & events
The turning point came in 1884. Under the leadership of Mayor John C. Gibbons, alongside civic figures W. B. Aikin, E. L. Dohoney, and Travis Henderson, the city council appointed a board of trustees to oversee the first full session of a properly organized system. Three schools opened under that new arrangement.
One stood on this very site: the Aikin Institute, which over the years carried the names Aikin High School and later Paris High School. A second school, the Graham School, had begun life as the Paris Female Institute. A third served the town's Black students, first located on North Jefferson Street and later moved to a new site, where it was named Gibbons High School to honor the former mayor.
The system's first superintendent was J. C. Brooks, who came from Tennessee. But the figure who shaped Paris schools most was a later superintendent, J. G. Wooten, whose tenure ran an extraordinary thirty-seven years. Under him the system grew and improved, and in 1924 it even took in Paris Junior College, which remained part of the public schools until 1949.
Its place in the American story
The story of Paris Public Schools is the story of how public education actually took root in small-town America — not by proclamation, but through the patient work of mayors, councils, and long-serving superintendents. Multiply this one town by thousands and you have the making of the American common-school system.
It is also an honest record of that system's central injustice. The three schools of 1884 included a separate school for Black children, a reminder that the education Paris built for itself was delivered under segregation. The naming of Gibbons High School wove that separate institution into the town's civic memory even as the color line divided its classrooms.
And the long career of a superintendent like Wooten reflects a national pattern too: in the era before sprawling bureaucracies, a single dedicated administrator could hold an entire system's growth in his hands for a generation, absorbing a junior college along the way.
If you visit
Stand at this site and picture the Aikin Institute, the school that would grow into Paris High School. This spot was chosen as the anchor of the town's educational ambitions, and generations of students passed through the institution that began here.
As you read the marker, let the names do their work. Gibbons appears twice — once as the mayor who helped organize the system and again as the namesake of the school built for Black students — and that doubling is a small doorway into the fuller, more complicated history of the town.
Paris makes a rewarding stop on a northeast Texas road trip built around county seats and their courthouses, schools, and churches. Think of this marker as an invitation to notice how the everyday institutions we take for granted were, not so long ago, hard-won achievements.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · John C. Gibbons
- · J. G. Wooten
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Bralley-Pendleton School
Honey Grove, TX
Honey Grove's first school for African American children opened in 1882 with twenty students and a single teacher, named for early superintendent F. M. Bralley. It grew steadily, split into separate schools and rejoined, and in 1959 was renamed for its long-serving principal, John W. Pendleton. When the town's schools integrated in 1965–66, the Bralley-Pendleton buildings were sold and torn down.
Robert Cooke Buckner
Paris, TX
Robert Cooke Buckner arrived in Texas in 1859 and became a leading Baptist minister, pastoring this Paris congregation and helping charter the first Ladies' Aid group in the state. In 1877 he founded a Baptist orphans' home, giving the first dollar himself under a shady oak in Dallas. That seed grew into the sprawling network of charities known today as Buckner Benevolences.
First Baptist Church of Paris
Paris, TX
The Rev. Willis M. Pickett and six charter members organized the Union Baptist Church of Paris in 1854, and it grew into First Baptist Church. Among its pastors was the Rev. Robert Cooke Buckner, whose concern for orphans while at Paris grew into the wide-reaching Buckner Baptist Benevolences. The congregation lost its 1895 building to the great Paris fire of 1916 but rebuilt and continued a long record of local and foreign mission work.
Central Presbyterian Church
Paris, TX
Organized in 1844 during the Republic of Texas as the First Cumberland Presbyterian Church, this Paris congregation was founded by circuit-riding minister Samuel J. Corley. It grew through the long pastorate of Dr. Charles Manton, whose 1908 funeral drew flags to half-mast across town. After the devastating 1916 Paris fire destroyed its 1891 sanctuary, the congregation raised this Gothic Revival church in 1917, rich with stained glass and known for its music and education programs.