Site of Old Anderson High School, Kealing Junior High School
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Robertson Hill School, the first high school for blacks in Austin, opened on the corner of Eleventh and San Marcos streets in 1884. In 1907 the school moved to the corner of Olive and Curve Streets and was renamed E. H. Anderson High School. In 1913 the school was moved to 1607 Pennsylvania Avenue. It was renamed in honor of former Principal L. C. Anderson in 1938. In 1953 the school relocated to 900 Thompson Street. Anderson High School opened in its fifth location, 8403 Mesa, in 1973. Kealing Junior High School was opened in 1930 on this site. Named for educator Hightower Theodore Kealing (1859-1918), it was the first junior high school for blacks in the city, and had an initial enrollment of 337. When reenrollment increased, the school expanded into the former Anderson High School in 1954. The two buildings, known as East Kealing and West Kealing, were joined in 1962. The school was closed in 1971 due to court-ordered desegregation. The original Kealing Junior High School building was razed in 1983, amd the old Anderson High School on this site burned in 1984. A new Kealing Junior High was built and opened in 1986. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Austin's first high school for Black students opened in 1884 as Robertson Hill School and, through several moves and renamings, became L. C. Anderson High School, honoring a longtime principal. Kealing Junior High, the city's first junior high for Black students, opened on this site in 1930, named for educator Hightower Theodore Kealing, and later merged with the Anderson buildings. The schools here closed in 1971 under court-ordered desegregation, and the old buildings were later razed or lost to fire.
Why it matters
These institutions were the heart of Black education in segregated Austin, and their story runs straight through the long American struggle from segregation to desegregation.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
After the Civil War and Emancipation, Black communities across the South poured their hopes into education. In the Reconstruction years and the decades that followed, freedpeople and their descendants built schools, often against long odds and with meager public funding, because they understood that learning was a foundation for freedom. Austin was no exception, and by 1884 the city had opened its first high school for Black students.
But these schools rose within a hardening system of segregation. By the end of the nineteenth century, laws and customs across the South enforced strict separation of the races, and the doctrine of "separate but equal" gave that separation a veneer of legal legitimacy — even though the schools set aside for Black children were almost never equal in funding or facilities.
That is the world this site belongs to: a Black community in a segregated Texas capital, moving its cherished schools from building to building as enrollment grew, naming them for the educators who had shaped generations, and holding those institutions at the very center of community life.
People & events
The story begins in 1884 with Robertson Hill School, Austin's first high school for Black students. Over the following decades the school moved and was renamed more than once, eventually honoring L. C. Anderson, a former principal whose long service made his name synonymous with Black secondary education in the city. From one corner to another, and finally to new locations across town, Anderson High carried that legacy forward through the twentieth century.
In 1930, on this very site, Kealing Junior High School opened its doors to an initial enrollment of 337 students. It was the first junior high for Black students in Austin, and it took its name from educator Hightower Theodore Kealing, who lived from 1859 to 1918. As the years passed and enrollment climbed, Kealing expanded into the neighboring former Anderson High building; the two structures, known as East and West Kealing, were joined together in 1962.
Then the ground shifted beneath them. In 1971 the school on this site closed under court-ordered desegregation — the legal dismantling of the separate school system that had defined Southern education for generations. The original Kealing building was razed in 1983, and the old Anderson High that stood here was lost to fire in 1984. A new Kealing opened in 1986, carrying the name into a new era even as the old walls came down.
Its place in the American story
The arc of this single Austin site traces the whole long American journey from segregation toward desegregation. It opens in the era of "separate but equal," when Black communities built their own institutions because the doors of white schools were closed to them, and it closes with a courtroom order to integrate — the machinery of the mid-century civil rights revolution reaching into one neighborhood's schools.
That 1971 closure did not happen in isolation. It flowed from the landmark ruling that declared segregated public schools unconstitutional and from years of legal and political struggle to make that ruling real, city by city and district by district. Desegregation was a victory, but it was also complicated: it often meant the closing of beloved Black schools and the scattering of communities that had formed around them.
That is why remembering places like this matters. Anderson and Kealing were not merely buildings; they were engines of achievement and pride for Black Austin, and their teachers and graduates carried that legacy far beyond these blocks. Their story is a chapter in the national history of how Americans fought to make the promise of equal education something more than words.
If you visit
Come to this spot knowing that the buildings themselves are gone — razed or burned decades ago — so what you are really visiting is the ground itself and the memory it holds. That absence is part of the story. Let the marker do the work of raising the old walls back up in your imagination.
Picture the 337 students who first filled Kealing in 1930, and the generations of Anderson High graduates who passed through the schools that stood and shifted across this city. This was the heart of Black education in segregated Austin, a place of teachers whose names were kept alive on the buildings they served.
As you stand here, notice how close history can feel: within living memory, this site moved from a segregated school to a court-ordered closing to a new school bearing the old name. If you are exploring Austin's past, this is a stop that rewards a quiet moment — a chance to honor an institution that shaped a community and to trace, on one patch of ground, the nation's long struggle toward equality in the classroom.
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
- · L. C. Anderson
- · Hightower Theodore Kealing
Related events
- · school desegregation
Themes & tags
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