Bethlehem School

Bethlehem School became a community's memory. KLTV reported in 2025 that it began around 1900 in a wooden church and served Black children for nearly seventy years, until it closed in 1969 and its students and teachers moved to Union Hill. At the marker ceremony, Rodell Miller, then 98, was named as one of the last living Bethlehem teachers. Gilmer's Sharon A. Richardson Elementary is named for a woman who attended. G. H. Baird's 1946 county history counted 14 schools for Black pupils across the county, with 71 teachers.

What the plaque says

Bethlehem School The African American community of Bethlehem in Upshur County has long valued education, building schools soon after Emancipation. Assistance from the Rosenwald Fund resulted in a four-room schoolhouse in 1922 named Bethlehem Colored School. J.W. Sharp (1872-1960) and his daughter, Catha M. McDaniel (1918-2001), were longtime educators here. Teachers include Era Warren, Alma Ray-Batts Simon, Tommie Bozeman, Rodell Miller and Ira Mae Sparks. Students competed in academic and athletic activities and won many trophies. Consolidation with Union Hill ISD closed the school in 1968. Despite vast imbalances in resources due to segregation, the school benefited the students and the whole community through education and events. (2022)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Bob Sandlin State Park — 16 mi
  A 1987 state park on a 9,000-acre reservoir, where a Republic of Texas stockade called Fort Sherman stood in 1838 and the Caddo lived from A.D. 800 to 1860, now with fishing piers, trails and cabins.
• Daingerfield State Park — 21 mi
  A pine-and-hardwood park built in 1935-39 by a white and a Black Civilian Conservation Corps company, with a dammed lake, Bass Lodge and a 2.4-mile loop trail around the water.
• Tyler State Park — 30 mi
  A 985-acre park eight miles north of Tyler, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1935 to 1941 around a 64-acre spring-fed lake, with more than 13 miles of trails.

More markers nearby

• Bettie Methodist Church — 2.6 mi
• Soules Chapel Methodist Church — 4.7 mi
• Site of Old Gilmer — 5.9 mi
• Kelsey School — 7.6 mi