Site of Blackshear High School
Odessa, Ector County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In early 1890, Inez Rathbun earned money teaching area students at the Ector County Courthouse. About the same time, Ector County organized a public school system. Over the next decades, the number of students in the area steadily increased. In 1921, the Texas Legislature officially established the Ector County Independent School District (ECISD). Both Anglos and Mexican-American students attended the same school. In 1932, the district established the first African American school in a one-room structure at the corner of South Muskingum and Myrtle streets. Ella Sayles served as the first teacher for the initial class of eight students. As the school grew, the district added a second classroom and utilized space at a nearby church. Although the district added three more rooms in the 1940s, by the 1947-48 school year, increased population caused the students to attend classes in shifts. In the fall of 1948, a campus for Blackshear High School opened at this site. Named for the noted Texas black educator Edward Lavoisier Blackshear, the school provided expanded facilities for African American students in the upper grade levels. Upon integration of all the district schools in 1966, the campus was converted for use as Blackshear Middle School. In 1983, it became a magnet elementary school. Its link to early education in the community and to its namesake educator remain significant today. (2006)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
As oil-boom Odessa grew through the early 20th century, its African American children were long confined to a single one-room school opened in 1932, where Ella Sayles taught the first class of eight. Demand steadily outstripped the cramped quarters until, in 1948, a proper campus for Blackshear High School opened on this site, named for the pioneering Texas Black educator Edward Lavoisier Blackshear. When the district integrated in 1966 the building became a middle school, and it later served as a magnet elementary.
Why it matters
Blackshear's history traces the arc of segregated education and hard-won integration in West Texas, and honors the teachers who gave Black students opportunity within a separate and unequal system.
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Related people
- · Inez Rathbun
- · Ella Sayles
- · Edward Lavoisier Blackshear
Related events
- · Integration of Ector County schools (1966)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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The 1926 oil strike in Ector County flooded Odessa with workers and their children, and by the mid-1950s the school district needed a new high school on the city's south side. Opened in 1957 and named for Confederate general and Texas legislator Mathew Ector, the school served a student body that was predominantly Hispanic and African American. Its history became entangled in the long fight over desegregation, and rather than fully integrate, the district closed it as a high school after MALDEF's 1981 legal action.
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