Site of Blackshear/Fisher School
Athens, Henderson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Athens' first public school for African Americans was established in 1876-77. Athens Colored School held classes in a Baptist church and later in a 2-room schoolhouse erected at this site. Richard C. Fisher, who joined the school's faculty in 1914 and who later became principal, renamed the school Blackshear to honor a former professor at Prairie View College. The school was accredited in 1924. A new school, built here in 1932, was renamed for Professor R. C. Fisher upon his death in 1934. Fisher High School closed in 1966 with the integration of schools in Athens.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the years just after emancipation, Athens' Black families built their own path to learning, opening the town's first public school for African Americans in 1876–77 with classes in a Baptist church and later a two-room schoolhouse. Educator Richard C. Fisher, who joined the faculty in 1914 and became principal, renamed it Blackshear to honor a Prairie View professor, and after his death in 1934 the school carried his own name. Fisher High School served the community until 1966, when integration closed its doors.
Why it matters
The rise and closing of this school trace the whole arc of segregated Black education in Texas, from Reconstruction self-reliance to the integration era.
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Related people
- · Richard C. Fisher
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Richard Columbus Fisher
Athens, TX
Born in Falls County in 1888, Richard Columbus Fisher trained as a teacher at Prairie View and in 1914 joined the Blackshear Colored School in Athens. Over nearly two decades he built it from a seven-grade school into an accredited twelve-grade high school, and in 1932 the community moved into a new brick building and named it Fisher High School in his honor—the same year he died.
Mt. Providence Baptist Church
Athens, TX
Mt. Providence Baptist Church took shape in 1888, its earliest congregants worshipping in borrowed churches, homes, and brush arbors before trustees bought land in 1890. Its classrooms did double duty for pupils of the Blackshear School, and baptisms were held in a pool near the old Harbison-Walker brickyard. After World War II the congregation bought a surplus military barracks from Camp Fannin and hauled it in as their new sanctuary, later bricking it over and adding an indoor baptismal pool. The church remains a hub of community aid in Athens.
Site of Gum Creek School
Athens, TX
After the Civil War, Armstead Barker brought his family to this area and other African American families followed, forming the settlement of Gum Creek. By the mid-1880s their children were learning through the eighth grade in a one-room frame schoolhouse, attending only from October through March so they could work the fields. Shared for decades with Wade's Chapel A.M.E. Church, the school closed in 1939 and its building later burned, but it stands in memory as a foundation of local Black education.
Sand Flat Cemetery
Athens, TX
In 1856 Joseph Stirman donated five acres for a church and school open to all "regardless of race, sex, or religion," seeding the Sand Flat community; two of those acres became the resting place of its African American families. Men like Henry Givens, brought to the county enslaved in 1855, gained their freedom and by 1867 stood on the county's Black voter rolls, going on to farm, teach, and lead. The cemetery holds their descendants alongside veterans of both World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam, tended still by the families who remain.