Site of Dunbar High School
Mexia, Limestone County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Public education efforts for African American students in Mexia began in 1883 with a school on Herman Street. After fire destroyed it, trustees selected this site for a two-story brick schoolhouse built in 1915. T.K. Price was principal at the time. The school was named for Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1872-1906), a noted African American author and poet from Ohio. The schoolhouse had ten large classrooms and an auditorium. In 1948, it was razed and replaced with a large one-story school that served until integration in 1968. Later used for other classes, the structure was eventually demolished, but the site remains an important reminder of early education in Mexia. (2005)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Public schooling for African American children in Mexia began in 1883, and after fire destroyed the first building, this site received a two-story brick schoolhouse in 1915. It was named for Paul Laurence Dunbar, the celebrated Black poet and author from Ohio, and held ten classrooms and an auditorium under principal T. K. Price. A larger school replaced it in 1948 and served until integration in 1968, after which the buildings were eventually demolished—leaving the site as a landmark of the community's educational history.
Why it matters
Dunbar High School reflects the determination of Black Texans to educate their children under segregation, and the naming honors a founding voice of African American literature.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the decades after emancipation, African American communities across the South faced a hard truth: the education of their children would fall largely to their own determination. Public schooling was segregated and unequal, and Black schools were routinely underfunded and overlooked. Yet in town after town, Black families and local leaders built and sustained schools anyway, treating education as the surest path to a fuller freedom.
Mexia, in Limestone County in east-central Texas, was one such town. Its effort to educate African American students began in 1883 — barely a generation after slavery ended — with a school on Herman Street. That early date is itself a testament to how quickly the community moved to establish learning for its children.
This was the Progressive era's version of a long struggle: building durable institutions under the constraints of segregation, and doing so with pride and permanence in mind.
People & events
The story of the site is one of persistence through setbacks. The community's first school building, on Herman Street, was destroyed by fire — the kind of loss that could have ended a fragile educational effort. Instead, the trustees selected this new site and, in 1915, raised a substantial two-story brick schoolhouse with ten large classrooms and an auditorium. At the time, T. K. Price served as principal, guiding the school through its new beginning.
They named the school for Paul Laurence Dunbar, the celebrated African American author and poet from Ohio who lived from 1872 to 1906. The choice was deliberate and meaningful: Dunbar was one of the first Black American writers to win a wide national audience, and countless segregated schools across the country took his name as a point of pride and aspiration for their students.
The school evolved with the community it served. In 1948 the 1915 building was razed and replaced by a large one-story school, which served students until integration arrived in 1968. Afterward the structure was used for other classes before it was eventually demolished — but the site endured as a landmark of the community's long educational history.
Its place in the American story
Dunbar High School's story is a local chapter in one of the most important struggles in American history: the fight of Black Americans to educate their children under a system designed to hold them back. From Reconstruction through the era of legal segregation, schools like this one were the institutional backbone of Black communities — sources of teachers, leaders, and hope.
The name itself carries national weight. That a school in a small Texas town honored Paul Laurence Dunbar links Mexia to a nationwide phenomenon, for Dunbar schools sprang up in Black communities across the country. Naming a school for a pioneering Black poet was a quiet but powerful assertion: that these children had a literary and cultural heritage worthy of celebration and pursuit.
The arc from 1883 to integration in 1968 also traces the larger legal history of the nation — from the entrenchment of segregation to its dismantling. When integration finally came, it changed everything, including the fate of the beloved separate schools that Black communities had built and sustained. The bittersweet closing of institutions like Dunbar is part of the complicated legacy of that hard-won progress.
If you visit
There is no schoolhouse left to walk through here, and that absence is part of what the marker asks you to feel. You are standing on ground where, for generations, a community insisted on educating its children — first in 1915's two-story brick building, then in the school that replaced it in 1948. Let the empty site prompt you to imagine the classrooms, the auditorium, and the students who passed through them.
Carry the name with you as you look. Paul Laurence Dunbar was a genuine literary pioneer, and reading a poem or two of his before or after your visit will deepen the meaning of the school that honored him. It connects this quiet spot to a national story of Black achievement and aspiration.
For travelers interested in the history of education and civil rights, Mexia offers a chance to reflect on both the determination that built these schools and the changes that eventually closed them. It is a place that rewards a thoughtful pause — a reminder that landmarks are not only the buildings that survive, but the ground where important things happened.
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
- · Paul Laurence Dunbar
- · T. K. Price
Themes & tags
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