Tueria Dell Marshall
Dallas, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(1883-1960) A native of Texas, Tueria Dell Marshall attended Wiley College and Prairie View Normal. He became a teacher in Dallas and worked at several schools before being named principal of Lincoln, the city's second high school for African American students, in 1939. He served in that capacity until retirement in 1955. In addition to education work, T.D. Marshall co-founded the Dallas Star Post, a weekly newspaper, and organized Wiley College Extension School. He died in 1960 and was buried in this cemetery, near his beloved Lincoln High, but the exact location of his grave is now unknown. Recorded – 2005
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Educated at Wiley College and Prairie View Normal, Tueria Dell Marshall taught across Dallas before becoming principal of Lincoln, the city's second high school for African American students, in 1939, a post he held until 1955. Beyond the classroom he co-founded the Dallas Star Post newspaper and organized a Wiley College extension school. He was buried near his beloved Lincoln High in 1960, though the exact site of his grave is now lost.
Why it matters
His life reflects the dedication of Black educators who, under segregation, built the schools and institutions that opened opportunity for their communities.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Tueria Dell Marshall's life, from 1883 to 1960, spanned the long decades of legal segregation in Texas. Under Jim Crow, Black and white Texans lived largely separate lives fixed by law, and nowhere was the separation more consequential than in the schools. African American communities were served by their own, and those schools carried the weight of a community's hopes on chronically unequal resources.
In a growing city like Dallas, the education of Black children depended enormously on the dedication of Black teachers and principals—men and women who often taught with too little and demanded much, because they understood that the classroom was the surest path their students had toward a wider life. To lead such a school was to be a pillar of the whole community, not merely an administrator.
Marshall came of age in the institutions that made such leadership possible. He studied at Wiley College and at Prairie View Normal, schools that trained generations of Black Texans for the professions—above all, for teaching—and he carried that training back into the classrooms of Dallas.
People & events
A native of Texas, Tueria Dell Marshall spent his working life in the service of education. After his studies at Wiley College and Prairie View Normal, he taught at several schools across Dallas before being named, in 1939, the principal of Lincoln—the city's second high school for African American students. He held that post until his retirement in 1955, guiding the school through more than a decade and a half.
His energies reached well beyond the schoolhouse. Marshall co-founded the Dallas Star Post, a weekly newspaper, giving his community that essential thing a Black newspaper provided under segregation: a voice, a record, and a source of news the mainstream press ignored. He also organized a Wiley College Extension School, extending the reach of his alma mater and the chance of higher learning to people who might otherwise never have had it.
There is a poignant note at the close of his story. When he died in 1960, he was buried in this cemetery, close to his beloved Lincoln High School—but the exact location of his grave is now unknown. A man who gave so much to his community's memory and instruction rests here in a spot the record can no longer pinpoint, and this memorial stands, in part, to make sure that his name at least is not lost.
Its place in the American story
Marshall's life reflects a truth that runs through the whole American story of the segregation era: that in the face of legal exclusion, Black educators built and sustained the institutions that opened opportunity for their communities. The schools they led, the newspapers they founded, and the extension classes they organized were acts of both survival and defiance—the deliberate construction of ladders where the wider society had removed them.
High schools like Lincoln were far more than buildings. For African American families under Jim Crow, they were centers of pride and ambition, and the principals who ran them shaped not just curricula but life chances, sending graduates on toward colleges and careers that segregation was designed to foreclose.
That a man of such consequence should lie in an unmarked spot speaks to a larger pattern in American history—how easily the contributions and even the graves of Black leaders were allowed to fade from the official record. Memorials like this one are part of a wider, ongoing effort to recover those lives and give them the recognition their communities always knew they deserved.
If you visit
This is a memorial in a cemetery, so come in a reflective frame of mind. Take time with the marker itself, and read the arc of the life it records: the studies at Wiley and Prairie View, the years of teaching, the long principalship at Lincoln, the newspaper, the extension school. It is a great deal of quiet, patient work to hold in mind at once.
Let the detail about the lost grave settle in as you stand there. Somewhere close by, this educator rests in a spot no one can now name—which makes the marker not a headstone but something more like a promise kept, a refusal to let his name disappear along with the location. Walking the surrounding ground, you feel the gap between the size of the life and the modesty of the trace it left.
The memorial sits near the site of his beloved Lincoln High, and holding the two together—the school he led and the cemetery where he lies—turns a short visit into something meaningful. For anyone tracing Dallas's African American history, this is a fitting and moving stop, a place to pay respect to one of the many educators who built so much and asked for so little in return.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Tueria Dell Marshall
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Lincoln High School
Dallas, TX
In the depths of the Jim Crow era, Dallas needed a modern high school for its Black students, whose only option had been the overcrowded Booker T. Washington campus miles away. Backed partly by a New Deal Public Works Administration grant, Lincoln High School opened in January 1939 with 1,255 students and a striking Moderne building whose glass-brick tower became a neighborhood landmark. Under founding principal Tueria Dell Marshall, enrollment surged past 3,000, and the school produced more than 200 educators among its distinguished alumni.
Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church
Dallas, TX
In 1884, Rev. A.R. Griggs and Jane Johnson Calloway Endsley organized Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church to serve Dallas's African American Baptist community. After a series of relocations in the early twentieth century, the congregation settled at its present site in 1950 under the leadership of Rev. L.J. Taylor and his wife, Portia, who became strong advocates for education in the community. Anchored by its long legacy and active membership, Macedonia has expanded its property and remained a cornerstone of Black community life in Dallas.
St. Paul United Methodist Church
Dallas, TX
In 1873, recently freed people in Dallas's Freedman's Town gathered under a brush arbor with Methodist ministers to organize the area's first African American Methodist Episcopal church, with a sanctuary that doubled as a school for Black children. The congregation helped train ministers and even hosted the first classes of the college that became Huston-Tillotson University. Its brick sanctuary, designed after a plan by pioneering Black architect William Sidney Pittman, took 26 years to build—reportedly in five shades of brick brought by parishioners as offerings—and the church endured as a spiritual and political anchor even as highways demolished the surrounding neighborhoods.
Freedman's Cemetery
Dallas, TX
Settled by formerly enslaved African Americans after the Civil War, this part of Dallas County became home to a thriving Black community of churches, businesses, and homes. Freedman's Cemetery was established in 1869 and expanded in 1879 by trustees including the Rev. A. R. Griggs, a former slave who became a leading church figure and champion of public education. Construction of the Central Expressway in the 1930s erased its aboveground markers, but descendants and the city later worked to preserve and memorialize the site.