Site of Hilliard High School
Bay City, Matagorda County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Site of Hilliard High School The Bay City African American community established a school in the 1890s, and A.A. Deleon served as its first teacher. Three others, A.G. Hilliard, A.P. Allen and J.J. Grundy, began shortly after the school opened. By 1904, the school's enrollment had outgrown the first building, so the community attained a larger one. The new school, a two-story frame structure, was named after noted educator Booker T. Washington and was adopted by the Bay City School District in 1905. By 1926, there were 225 students and only four teachers. Hilliard continued as teacher and later as principal at the school. Born in Georgia in 1863, he came to Texas in 1871 with his parents, Bunk and Mary, former slaves who strongly valued education. After his graduation from the Oakland Normal School, which opened in Gonzales in 1882 to train African American teachers, Mary encouraged her son to continue his education at Prairie View State Normal College. He taught in Bay City for 28 of his 48 years in education. He died in 1936 and is buried in Bay City's Eastview Cemetery with his wife Pearl. Recognizing Hilliard's contribution to the school, the board of trustees renamed it Hilliard High School after he died. His son A.G. Hilliard II (d. 1983) then became principal. The ever-growing school needed a new buidling by the 1940s. Acclaimed architect Wyatt C. Hedrick designed a new facility, finished in 1948 at this site, where it served as Hilliard High School until 1967. The district then used it for two years as a junior high. Over the years, the school produced two state champion football teams and many other award-winning students, reflecting the community's pride and goals for its children. (2002)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Bay City's African-American community opened a school in the 1890s and by 1905 had grown it into a two-story frame building named for Booker T. Washington and folded into the local district. Its guiding figure was A. G. Hilliard, son of formerly enslaved Georgians who prized education; trained at the Oakland Normal School and Prairie View, he taught and led the school for decades until it was renamed in his honor after his death in 1936. A new campus by architect Wyatt C. Hedrick opened here in 1948 and served as Hilliard High until integration in 1967.
Why it matters
Segregated schools like Hilliard were built and sustained by Black communities' own determination, producing generations of achievement despite chronic underfunding under Jim Crow.
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Related people
- · A. G. Hilliard
- · Booker T. Washington
- · A. A. Deleon
- · Wyatt C. Hedrick
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Linnie Roberts Elementary School
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By 1894 Matagorda County counted twenty African American schools serving more than 700 children, and Bay City's first — a donated one-room frame building — grew into a school named for Booker T. Washington. Among its long-serving teachers was Linnie McHenry Roberts, a Prairie View–educated educator who taught elementary classes for 32 years and earned wide respect for her care of students and community. In 1961 the school board opened a modern brick school and named it in her honor, a building that still stands as a tribute to her legacy.
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Vine Grove Christian Church
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