Site of Central School
Marshall, Harrison County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Early schools for Marshall's African Americans consisted of loosely organized classes held in homes, churches, and lodge halls. In 1894 Professor H. B. Pemberton, Sr., convinced city officials of the need for a school building and a fixed curriculum for African Americans. Pemberton arranged a loan, which the African American community repaid, to establish Marshall's first public school, "Central School," at this site in 1894. Central expanded in 1906 to include a high school. Central High School moved in 1925 and the school here was renamed "Hillside." Hillside School closed in 1941. (1994)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
For years, schooling for Marshall's Black children happened wherever space allowed — in homes, churches, and lodge halls. In 1894 Professor H. B. Pemberton, Sr., persuaded city officials to back a real school and arranged a loan, repaid by the Black community itself, to build "Central School" on this site. It grew to include a high school by 1906, and after Central High moved in 1925 the campus continued as Hillside School until it closed in 1941.
Why it matters
Central School shows African American communities in the Jim Crow South financing and building their own institutions of learning when public support fell short.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Marshall, in deep East Texas near the Louisiana line, was cotton and plantation country before the Civil War, and Harrison County had one of the largest enslaved populations in Texas. When emancipation came, a large Black community remained there. For those freedpeople, education was one of the most urgent hopes of freedom, denied to most of them by law and custom under slavery.
Marshall became a remarkable center of Black education. Wiley College was founded there in the 1870s and Bishop College in the 1880s, both serving African American students at a time when few other doors were open. That gave the town an unusually strong tradition of Black teachers, scholars and families committed to learning.
Public schooling for Black children, though, lagged far behind. By the 1890s Jim Crow segregation was hardening across the South, and in 1896 the U.S. Supreme Court approved "separate but equal" in Plessy v. Ferguson. In practice, schools for Black children were almost always separate and almost never equal: underfunded, overcrowded and often without buildings of their own.
That is the backdrop for this marker. Before 1894, as it explains, Marshall's Black children learned wherever their community could find room: in homes, in churches and in lodge halls. The determination was there. What was missing was a permanent building and a real curriculum.
People & events
The central figure here is Professor H. B. Pemberton, Sr. In 1894 he did something difficult for a Black educator in the post-Reconstruction South: he persuaded city officials that Marshall's African American children needed a proper school building and a fixed course of study, not a patchwork of borrowed rooms.
Persuasion only went so far. To make the school real, Pemberton arranged a loan, and it was the Black community of Marshall that paid it back. That detail is the heart of the story. Families who had very little to spare put their own money into a public school, in effect paying twice: once through taxes and once through their own pockets, to give their children what the system was not providing.
The result was Central School, Marshall's first public school for African Americans, built on this site in 1894. It grew. In 1906 it added a high school, opening the way for Black students in Marshall to finish a full secondary education close to home, and in turn, to go on to college or into teaching.
In 1925 Central High School moved to a new location, and the school here took the name Hillside. It served generations of children until 1941, when it closed. The school is gone, but the effort that built it reaches across nearly half a century of Marshall's history and well beyond.
Its place in the American story
Central School is part of one of the great, still underappreciated stories in American history: how African Americans in the segregated South built their own educational institutions, very often with their own money and labor, when governments refused to fund them fairly.
Across the South, Black communities held fundraisers, donated land, built schoolhouses and, as here, repaid loans to make schooling possible. The result was a generation of teachers, ministers, professionals and community leaders. Many of the people who later led the civil rights movement came out of schools that their own communities had fought to create.
The Marshall story also complicates a simple picture of Jim Crow. The system was unjust and heavily stacked against Black citizens, but the people living under it were not passive. They negotiated with city officials, organized and financed their own future. Pemberton's success in winning official support while his community covered the cost shows both the limits of that era and the resourcefulness it demanded.
In a town already known for its Black colleges, Central School supplied a crucial missing link. It was the public school that prepared local children for the higher education Marshall offered.
If you visit
The school building itself is gone, so this is a place for reflection more than sightseeing. Stand at the marker and picture the scene in 1894: a new schoolhouse rising on this spot, paid for in part by the families whose children would fill it. Think too of the earlier classes held in parlors, sanctuaries and lodge rooms all over town.
As you take in the site, think about the timeline the marker lays out: one building that served as a first public school, then a high school, then Hillside School, across nearly fifty years. Generations of Marshall families passed through this ground.
Marshall rewards a longer stay for anyone interested in African American history and education. The town's long connection to Black higher education makes it a meaningful stop, and the historic downtown and courthouse square give you a feel for the town these students knew.
Marshall sits on Interstate 20 near the Louisiana border, which makes it an easy and worthwhile stop on any trip between Dallas and Shreveport. Give yourself time to look beyond the main roads; much of the town's history lives in its neighborhoods.
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
- · H. B. Pemberton, Sr.
Themes & tags
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