Site of Shiloh School
White Oak, Gregg County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The newly freed African Americans of the Shiloh community established a school for their children shortly after the Civil War. The one-room building was demolished in the late 1800s and classes were held at the Shiloh Baptist Church. With financial assistance from the Julius Rosenwald fund, a new two-room school was erected in 1920. It was replaced by a large brick building in the 1930s. The high school was closed in 1949; the end of segregation closed the rest of the Shiloh School in 1966. Shiloh graduates became contributing citizens in Texas and the nation. Long vacant, the school building was later used to store chemicals for a plastics company and burned in 1993. (1998)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Soon after the Civil War, the newly freed African Americans of the Shiloh community built a one-room school for their children, later holding classes in the Shiloh Baptist Church. With help from the Julius Rosenwald Fund, they raised a new two-room schoolhouse in 1920, replaced by a brick building in the 1930s. The school served the community until desegregation closed it in 1966; its graduates went on to contribute across Texas and the nation.
Why it matters
Shiloh reflects the Rosenwald school movement, which built thousands of schoolhouses that gave rural Black Southerners a chance at education under Jim Crow.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Shiloh Baptist Church
White Oak, TX
Founded in 1871, Shiloh Baptist Church grew from the efforts of a formerly enslaved man, Butcher Christian, who donated the land, and the church organizer Rev. John Baptist. Its first sanctuary was a log building, and for a time an adjacent school taught African American children in the Reconstruction-era community. When oil was later discovered on church land, the revenue funded a new sanctuary in 1936, and the congregation endures today.
New Hope Missionary Baptist Church
Gladewater, TX
In 1893, members of a nearby congregation moved into downtown Gladewater seeking work and founded New Hope under a brush arbor, led by Reverend Louis Holoway and seven others. Like countless Black churches born after emancipation, it became far more than a house of worship—the first school for African American children in Gladewater met within its walls. Rebuilt and expanded across the 20th century, it has anchored its community for well over a century.
Longview Womack High School
Longview, TX
Opened in 1930 on Gum Street as the Longview Negro High School, this campus gave African American students a secondary education in the era of legal segregation. Rebuilt after a 1946 fire and later renamed for beloved teacher Mary C. Womack, it produced graduates guided by principals honored in the East Texas Black Educators Hall of Fame. A federal desegregation order finally closed and razed the school.
Gilgal Baptist Church
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Founded in 1865 as the Civil War ended, this Black Baptist congregation began under a brush arbor and took the biblical name "Gilgal," the Israelites' first camp in the Promised Land — a fitting choice for a people newly freed. Over the following decades its members raised a frame church, ran a Black school on donated land, and, under Rev. W. L. Dickson, opened the Dickson Colored Orphans Home. The brick-veneered sanctuary and educational annex trace a congregation that steadily built institutions of faith, learning, and care.