Sunlight Girls Club
Port Lavaca, Calhoun County, Texas
Marker Inscription
When desegregation began in Calhoun County in 1955, many African American students made educational and cultural adjustments. The summer before the 1955-56 school year, long-time educator Naomi B. Chase took a group of students from the all black Alice O. Wilkins school on a picnic to Indianola at the La Salle Monument. With concern for students adjusting to the changes brought on by integration, Mrs. Chase founded the Sunlight Girls Club on January 19, 1960 in her garage. In 1966, the Calhoun County School District provided the Wilkins School cafeteria as the Sunlight Girls’ clubhouse, and the group obtained their charter. The objectives of the club were to bridge the gap of integration, to instill and promote finer womanhood, to instill principles of honesty, fair play, and justice, to develop good character through precepts and examples, to promote leadership, complete high school, strive for higher education, and to provide scholarships for furtherance of education. The first Sunlight Girls Club formed with fourteen girls, ages nine through sixteen. Regular attendance at school and church were mandatory, and music was an integral part of the organization. To promote growth and achievement, the girls were provided instruction in religious studies, music, typing, first aid, cooking, sewing, and ceramics. In 1964, to continue with the girls’ growth and exposure, Edna Brown organized a band with instruments donated by the community. Approximately 312 girls were members of the Sunlight Girls Club during its 40 years of existence. Both sponsors and directors helped open the doors that parents could only dream for their children.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
As Calhoun County schools desegregated in 1955, educator Naomi B. Chase watched Black students from the all-Black Alice O. Wilkins School navigate wrenching change. In 1960 she founded the Sunlight Girls Club in her garage to guide them, teaching everything from music and typing to leadership and the value of finishing school. Over four decades some 312 girls passed through the club, which offered scholarships and, from 1964, even its own community-donated band.
Why it matters
The Sunlight Girls Club shows how Black women built their own institutions to shepherd children through the upheaval of integration, blending civil rights, education, and the making of confident young women.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Naomi B. Chase
- · Edna Brown
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Palacios Colored School
Palacios, TX
Founded in the 1920s, the Palacios Colored School was this Gulf Coast town's first school for African American children. Built anew in 1939 from an earlier two-room structure, its cross-gabled frame building with banks of tall windows served a student body that doubled to 81 pupils in the early 1940s. When Palacios schools finally integrated in 1963 the campus closed, ending some four decades as the heart of Black education in the community.
George Washington Carver School
Edna, TX
First graduating a class in 1912 as the Edna Colored School, this institution educated Black children in Jackson County through the long decades of segregation. Even after the Supreme Court ruled school segregation unconstitutional, Edna's schools stayed divided under a "two-race" system until the mid-1960s, and the district was not fully integrated until 1967. Renamed for George Washington Carver, the school remained a valued anchor of the community and today survives as a nonprofit community center.
F.W. Gross High School
Victoria, TX
Black education in Victoria began in a Reconstruction-era freedmen's school, and by 1902 a prominent brick schoolhouse stood on East Convent Street under the long leadership of Prof. Frederick W. Gross. Renamed in his honor in 1935, the school won a reputation for excellence in academics and athletics and moved to a new building in 1939. It served as Victoria's high school for African American students until integration in 1966.
Daule School
Cuero, TX
Founded in 1892 as a one-room wooden schoolhouse, Cuero Colored High School was the town's first school for Black children, drawing pupils from farm families who could attend only when field work allowed. Principal Eugene Daule guided Black education in DeWitt County for four decades, stretching meager, unequal resources as far as they would go; the school was renamed in his honor in 1937. Under later leaders it built a celebrated band and a broad curriculum before closing in 1965 when Cuero's schools finally integrated.