Site of Booker T. Washington School

🏛️The era

Bartlett sits in the blackland prairie of Central Texas, cotton country where the railroad and the cotton gin shaped town life in the early twentieth century. As in the rest of Texas, schools here were segregated by law. African American children went to separate schools that usually got less money, older buildings, and fewer resources than the schools for white children.

The late 1940s brought both pressure and opportunity. After World War II, Black communities across the South were demanding better schools. At the same time, the war had left behind a surplus of military buildings. Camp Swift, a large Army training camp near Bastrop, was one source of such buildings, and districts across the region bought surplus structures to deal with crowded classrooms.

The ground under the new school had its own history. It had been the site of Bartlett's Civilian Conservation Corps camp. The CCC was the New Deal program that put young men to work on conservation and public works projects during the Great Depression. So the school went up on land that had already served one national effort and now served another: educating a community's children.

The school's story runs right through the legal fight over segregation. The Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision declared segregated public schools unconstitutional, but in much of Texas actual integration came slowly. In Bartlett, it came in 1965.

👥People & events

The trouble started with crowding. The African American school in southwestern Bartlett had outgrown its buildings, so the trustees improvised and bought four buildings from Camp Swift to add space. A real fix needed money, and in 1948 a bond issue passed. Plans were drawn for a U-shaped building, and contractor Otto Lange built it on the old CCC camp site.

The school was already climbing before the new building opened. During the previous school year it had become a Class B accredited school offering all twelve grades. In May 1949 it held its first Junior-Senior Prom and its first graduation, milestones that meant a great deal to families who had pushed for a full high school for their children.

Gentry "Prof" Powell, Sr., and his wife Marguerite C. Powell were the heart of the school. Both had served at the original Bartlett Colored School, and in fall 1949 they moved with the students into the new building. A second plaque records Marguerite C. Powell as principal from 1947 to 1965. On September 16, 1949, students and teachers celebrated the new schoolhouse together.

After that the school kept growing. Students from Holland, Granger, and Davilla transferred in. It earned Class A accreditation, and in 1957 it took the name Booker T. Washington School. Its students competed in debate, spelling, declamation, and music. Coach Gentry Powell's football and track and field teams reached championship games and won at the district and state levels. When Bartlett's schools integrated in 1965, the Powells and other dedicated teachers moved to Bartlett High School and kept teaching. Today an alumni group keeps the school's memory alive.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

The name on this school points to a much larger story. Booker T. Washington, who was born into slavery and went on to lead Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, became one of the best-known Black educators in American history. Across the segregated South, communities named their schools after him to honor the idea that education was a road to dignity and advancement.

The Bartlett school shows something that is easy to miss in the national story of segregation. Black schools were underfunded by design, yet many became sources of real excellence and pride. Teachers held students to high standards, coached championship teams, and staged debates and recitals. These schools were community institutions in the fullest sense, and many alumni remember them with deep loyalty.

Its history also traces the long, uneven road from Brown v. Board of Education to integration. Eleven years passed between the 1954 decision and the integration of Bartlett's schools in 1965, a gap that was common across the South. When integration came, Black schools often closed or lost their identity, and preserving that heritage, as Bartlett's alumni group does, has become a nationwide effort to make sure those achievements are not forgotten.

🧭If you visit

The marker stands at the site of the school, on ground that has served the community in more than one way. As you stand there, try to picture the U-shaped building the 1948 bond paid for, and before that, the rows of a Depression-era CCC camp.

Bartlett is a small town with a historic downtown that rewards a slow walk. It is a good reminder of the cotton-and-railroad towns that once covered this part of Texas. The communities named on the marker, Holland, Granger, and Davilla, are close by, so you can drive the same roads that students traveled to attend this school.

For a road trip with a theme, this stop fits well with other African American history sites in Central Texas. Leave time to think about the people behind it: a husband and wife who devoted their careers to these students and then carried that work into an integrated school.