Black Education in Orange County

Wallace High's football team won what the Orange Leader calls the first two of Orange's five state titles, almost lost in history. Coach Willie Ray Smith Sr. joined the school in 1946 as its first football coach, with little football background. His team lost the 1948 state final 13-0 to Dennison Terrell, beat Victoria Gross 34-13 for the 1949 title, and won again in 1954 over Greenville Carver, 39-0, with Ernie Ladd as the standout. The Leader gives his record as 235 wins in 33 seasons and says Wallace won eight district championships under him.

What the plaque says

Black Education in Orange County As early as the 1870s, Orange County's African American children attended school in private homes and churches. The Orange County commissioners established 17 school districts in 1887. Schools included the Duncan Woods No. 3, located in the Duncan Woods community of southwestern Orange County. The school had probably been in operation for several years at that time. Thomas F. Pollard served as an early teacher there. Students within the city of Orange attended school at Mount Zion Baptist and then Salem Methodist Episcopal Colored Church in the 1880s. Under the leadership of teacher A.J. Criner, the school later moved to the United Brotherhood Friendship Hall. S.R. Pickney served as principal for 13 years, and during his tenure the school moved into a two-story frame structure, which became the Orange Colored School. It was renamed in 1930 in honor of educator and Tuskegee Institute President Russa Moton and again in 1946 for longtime Orange teacher and principal Emma Henderson Wallace. Moton Elementary and High School, which later occupied a three-story brick structure, was known for its beautiful campus and won acclaim for its sports and band programs. The district included schools for several hundred African American students and continued to build new facilities up until intergration in 1966. It utilized Franklin Elementary, built in 1958, and North Junior High School, opened in August 1964, only for a short while. Although most of the former African American campuses were phased out of use, the district, which became the West Orange Cove Independent School District, converted the North Junior High campus into a learning center. (1988, 2004)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stark Museum of Art — 0.8 mi
  A white-marble museum in Orange built by the Stark Foundation and opened in 1978, holding Western art, American Indian art, Audubon's Birds of America and Steuben glass, free to enter.
• Shangri La Botanical Gardens and Nature Center — 1.2 mi
  More than 250 acres on Adams Bayou, begun by H. J. Lutcher Stark in 1937, with garden rooms, a cypress-tupelo swamp, a heronry blind and free pontoon tours in season.
• Museum of the Gulf Coast — 20 mi
  Port Arthur's regional museum in a former bank building: fossils, Native Americans, the petroleum story, a 125-foot history mural and Halls of Fame for musicians, athletes and artists.
• Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum — 21 mi
  A re-created oil boomtown on the Lamar University campus, with a derrick, period shops, a 1941 granite monument and an optional re-enactment of the January 1901 Lucas gusher.

More markers nearby

• Emma Henderson Wallace — 0.2 mi
• Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown — 0.2 mi
• Saint Paul Christian Methodist Episcopal Church — 0.2 mi
• Salem United Methodist Church — 0.3 mi