Wharton Training School
Wharton, Wharton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
For almost eighty years, the Wharton Training School provided the African American community of Wharton County with high-quality education. The school was established in 1896 under the name Wharton Colored School. The first principal was W.H. Hathaway (d.1899). C.W. Dawson was principal from April 18, 1939, until the school closed in 1968. The school provided education for students of all ages, as it continued to do throughout its service. For nearly three decades, the original location of the school served as the center for African American education in Wharton. In 1927, the county applied for a Rosenwald fund grant to build a new school that would be able to serve more students. The grant was awarded and the school moved to the corner of Canton (now MLK Blvd.) and Outlar Streets with the money provided. A seven-room frame structure served as the main school building until 1955. The school was renamed the Wharton County Training School in 1937 and by 1939, it serviced the entire African American community of Wharton County. Students from schools outside of the city were transported to attend the training school. In 1955, a brick building was erected which housed the training school’s first science labs and additional classrooms. With this new building, the school was able to provide students with a full-scale curriculum, including advanced science, home economics and art classes. They were also able to offer athletic programs including a celebrated football team. The school became the center of the community and hosted many social events. Many graduates of the Wharton Training School returned as teachers or administrators before the school closed in 1968. Alumni groups are still active today, ensuring the legacy of the Wharton Training School.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in 1896 as the Wharton Colored School, this institution served as the heart of African American education in Wharton County for nearly eighty years. In 1927 the county won a Rosenwald Fund grant to build a larger school, part of the philanthropic program that helped construct thousands of Black schools across the segregated South. Renamed the Wharton County Training School and steadily expanded with new buildings, science labs, and a full curriculum, it educated generations—many of whom returned as teachers—until it closed with integration in 1968.
Why it matters
The school embodies how Black communities and the Rosenwald program built quality education against the constraints of Jim Crow, leaving a legacy alumni still honor.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
For nearly eighty years, from the last years of the nineteenth century deep into the twentieth, this school carried the education of Black Wharton County on its shoulders. It opened in 1896 as the Wharton Colored School, in a Texas — and a South — where segregation was the law and the resources handed to Black schools were a fraction of what white ones received.
That imbalance is the essential backdrop. Under Jim Crow, "separate but equal" was separate in fact and rarely equal in funding, buildings, or supplies. Whatever quality a Black school achieved, it usually achieved against the grain of the system, powered by the determination of the community it served and the teachers who stayed.
The decades this school spanned — the Progressive era through the modern civil-rights years — were exactly the period when Black Southerners were building durable institutions of their own: churches, lodges, and above all schools. In a segregated county, a school like this one wasn't just where children learned. It was a center of gravity for an entire community.
People & events
The school's story runs through its principals. W. H. Hathaway, its first, led it from the 1896 founding until his death in 1899 — a brief tenure that set the institution on its feet. Decades later, C. W. Dawson took the helm in the spring of 1939 and stayed until the school closed in 1968, an extraordinary run of leadership that spanned nearly the whole modern life of the school.
The turning point came in 1927, when the county secured a grant from the Rosenwald Fund to build a larger school. The new seven-room frame building rose at the corner of Canton — now Martin Luther King Boulevard — and Outlar Streets, and it served as the main building until 1955. Renamed the Wharton County Training School in 1937, by 1939 it was educating the entire African American community of the county, with students bused in from outlying schools.
In 1955 a new brick building brought the school's first science labs and more classrooms, and with them a full-scale curriculum: advanced science, home economics, art, and athletics, including a football team the community celebrated. The school became the place where the community gathered, and many of its graduates came back to teach and lead there before it closed with integration in 1968. Its alumni groups remain active still, keeping the memory deliberately alive.
Its place in the American story
The name on the 1927 building — Rosenwald — connects this small Texas county to one of the most important educational efforts in American history. The Rosenwald Fund, a partnership that drew on the philanthropy of a Northern businessman and the vision of Black educators and communities, helped build thousands of schools for Black children across the segregated South in the early twentieth century. Crucially, the local Black community typically contributed labor and money too, so these were schools people helped build with their own hands. This marker is one thread in that vast, nation-shaping fabric.
The school's arc also embodies a hard truth and a hopeful one at once. The hard truth: it existed because segregation forced Black students into separate institutions. The hopeful one: within those constraints, communities created schools of real quality — with science labs, arts, and championship teams — and produced graduates who returned as teachers to lift the next generation.
And the 1968 closing is itself a landmark of the civil-rights story. Schools like this one closed as integration finally arrived, a change that was both a victory and a loss — the end of an unjust system, but also the end of a beloved institution that had been the beating heart of Black community life.
If you visit
Look first at the street name. The corner of MLK Boulevard and Outlar carries the school's history in its very address — Canton Street was renamed, and the site where a Rosenwald-funded building once stood is woven into the modern map of Wharton. Standing there, you're at what was, for decades, the center of an entire community.
Bring the timeline with you and let it settle: 1896 to 1968, nearly eighty years, thousands of children, generations of teachers who had themselves once been students here. That kind of continuity is what turns a school into an institution, and it's worth a quiet moment to take in.
The living part of this story is its alumni. Because their groups remain active, this is a history that still has voices attached to it — and in Wharton, the school's legacy is honored rather than merely remembered. If your travels through this part of Texas touch on the African American history of the region, let this marker anchor that story: a place built against the odds, cherished across generations, and never forgotten.
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
- · W. H. Hathaway
- · C. W. Dawson
Themes & tags
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