Blanton School

The National Park Service lists Blanton School under the Rosenwald School Building Program in Texas, with 1923 as its significant year, a Bungalow/Craftsman design, and education and Black history as its themes. Its record gives 610 Witt Street and a publication date of September 12, 2006, a year after the plaque's listing date. The Hunt County Historical Commission chairman said in 2015 that research for the marker highlighted the courage it took for Black students to leave schools they knew in the 1960s for previously all-white ones.

What the plaque says

Blanton School In 1912, African American educator Booker T. Washington partnered with Julius Rosenwald, President of Sears, Roebuck & Company, to build schools for African American children in poor rural communities across the south. Rosenwald matched funds raised by the African American community and school district of Wolfe City to build Blanton School in 1923. This unusual cooperation between wealthy philanthropists, black citizens, and white officials was a hallmark of the Rosenwald program. Blanton School followed standard Rosenwald designs which maximized space and made use of natural lighting and ventilation. Until the 1950s, the school was located outside the city limits and did not have access to sewer or natural gas lines. The school calendar was organized around the cotton season, allowing students to work in the fields during fall harvests. Blanton had only three teachers for 70 students ranging from first to eighth grade. Graduates of Blanton School attended Farmers' Improvement School in nearby Ladonia or St. Paul's High School in Neylandville. Blanton continued to serve the African American community until Wolfe City schools integrated in 1965. The Blanton School was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2005 but was later demolished. It was the last of the three Rosenwald Schools built in Hunt County to remain standing. The school taught students both educational and life skills. Although opportunities for higher education were limited, many Blanton alumni earned Bachelors, Masters and Ph.D. Degrees. (2015)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 16 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.
• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 17 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 23 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.

More markers nearby

• Ebenezer Baptist Church — steps away
• Historic Site of Wolfe's Mill — 0.3 mi
• Gober Garage — 7.1 mi
• Gober Baptist Church — 7.1 mi