Site of Henry High School
Elkhart, Anderson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Despite adverse conditions, African Americans in Texas in the late 19th century worked hard to provide their children with an education. Students in this area attended Mt. Moriah, Boxes Creek, Beulah, Washington Chapel, Union Hope and New Mt. Zion schools. The abbreviated school year allowed the children to help their parents during planting and harvest seasons, and most students focused only on the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. In the 1930s, Hattie Jamerson, of the Mt. Moriah community, urged local residents to build a high school to serve the rural area's African American students. John Henry Sims, born and educated in Mt. Moriah, returned here in 1932 after earning a teaching certificate in Kansas. Inspired by Jamerson's efforts, he met with Julian P. Greer of the Elkhart Independent School District, and the school board selected a six-acre site here for a school building. Community residents razed the old school buildings and brought the lumber to use in the new construction, which began in 1937. The school was named for its first principal, George H. Henry, and it opened in January 1938. Students in grades 7-11 met at one end, and the other side housed elementary grades. Students could take basic classes, as well as science, history, homemaking, farming and shop. After Henry retired in 1946, H.J. Hurt served as principal. In 1939, the first five students graduated from Henry High School, which remained open until 1963, when it merged into Green Bay High School in Tucker. Elementary classes remained until integration with Elkhart schools in 1967. Since 1980, former Henry High students have met biennially to celebrate their educational roots and the community's historic efforts in providing for its children. (2004)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the rural communities around Elkhart, African American families long made do with scattered one-room schools and shortened terms that bent to the planting and harvest seasons. In the 1930s Hattie Jamerson pressed neighbors to build a proper high school, and teacher John Henry Sims helped win a site from the Elkhart district. Residents tore down the old schoolhouses and reused the lumber, opening Henry High School in 1938; it served the area until 1963, and its alumni still gather to honor the effort.
Why it matters
Built with donated labor and salvaged lumber in the Jim Crow era, Henry High School embodies how Black communities created educational opportunity for their children against long odds.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the rural counties of East Texas at the turn of the twentieth century, an education was something Black families had to build largely with their own hands. Under the Jim Crow system, public schooling for African American children was deliberately underfunded — housed in scattered one-room buildings, taught over a shortened term, and often reaching no further than the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic.
The school year itself bent to the demands of the cotton economy. Around Elkhart, as across the rural South, the term was abbreviated so children could work the fields during planting and harvest. Learning was fitted into the margins of a farming life, in schools with names like Mt. Moriah, Beulah, and New Mt. Zion that doubled as the anchors of their little communities.
Against that backdrop, the ambition to build a real high school — not just an elementary schoolhouse, but a place where a child could carry an education further — was an act of quiet defiance. It meant insisting that Black children in the countryside deserved the same horizon as anyone else.
People & events
The push began with Hattie Jamerson of the Mt. Moriah community, who in the 1930s urged her neighbors to build a high school for the area's African American students. Her vision found its instrument in John Henry Sims — born and educated in Mt. Moriah, who returned home in 1932 with a teaching certificate earned in Kansas. Inspired by Jamerson's effort, Sims took the case to Julian P. Greer of the Elkhart Independent School District, and the school board set aside a six-acre site.
Then the community built the school itself, in the most literal way. Residents tore down their old schoolhouses and hauled the salvaged lumber to the new site, where construction began in 1937. The building opened in January 1938, named for its first principal, George H. Henry. Grades seven through eleven met at one end and the elementary grades at the other, and students could study not only the basics but science, history, homemaking, farming, and shop.
The first five students graduated in 1939. After Henry retired in 1946, H.J. Hurt took the helm. Henry High School served the area until 1963, when it merged into Green Bay High School in Tucker; its elementary classes continued until integration with the Elkhart schools in 1967. Since 1980, the school's former students have gathered every other year to honor their roots and the community that made their education possible.
Its place in the American story
Henry High School is a monument to one of the most moving chapters in American history: the way Black communities, denied a fair share of public resources, pooled their own labor, land, and lumber to educate their children anyway. Across the Jim Crow South, African American families taxed themselves twice over — paying public taxes that funded white schools, then giving again in money, materials, and sweat to build their own.
The detail of neighbors razing their old schoolhouses and carrying the boards to a new site captures something essential about that self-help tradition. Nothing was wasted, and everything was shared. A high school built from salvaged lumber was, in its way, a declaration that a community's children were worth whatever it took.
That this happened in the 1930s, at the depths of the Depression and the height of segregation, only deepens its meaning. The graduates who walked out of Henry High carried an opportunity their parents had been denied — and the biennial reunions that continue to this day are proof that the community never forgot what that opportunity cost or what it was worth.
If you visit
This is a site marker, so come prepared to read the land rather than tour a building — to stand on the six acres a rural community fought to win and imagine the schoolhouse that once rose here from salvaged boards. Picture the two ends of the building the marker describes: the elementary grades on one side, the older students on the other, with classes in science, farming, homemaking, and shop.
Take a moment with the names. Hattie Jamerson, who first raised the idea; John Henry Sims, who came home from Kansas to make it real; George H. Henry, the first principal the school was named for. They were ordinary people who did something extraordinary, and the marker exists to keep their effort from being forgotten.
The surrounding countryside still carries the memory of the little community schools — Mt. Moriah, Beulah, New Mt. Zion — that fed into this one. As you stand here, remember that the alumni still return every other year to celebrate what was built on this ground. A visit is, in the best sense, a chance to join them in honoring it.
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
- · Hattie Jamerson
- · John Henry Sims
- · George H. Henry
Themes & tags
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