Brenham Normal and Industrial College

Daniel Porter was born into slavery in 1863, trained at Prairie View, and had helped his brother John open a school at Conroe in 1903. In Brenham the money came in halves. Citizens raised $250 in July 1905 toward a $500 down payment, and the Commercial Club of white business leaders supplied the rest. The 1907 catalog taught carpentry, blacksmithing, wheelwrighting, brickmaking, shoemaking and tailoring to men, and dairying and dressmaking to women. After Porter died in 1916 the Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Association took the campus at a sheriff's sale in 1917.

What the plaque says

Brenham Normal and Industrial College Brenham's African American and Anglo community leaders first discussed the Brenham Normal and Industrial College (BNIC) in a public meeting in March 1905, when Daniel Porter (1863-1916) came to the area seeking land and a building to create a school for African Americans. The college was legally established on April 17, 1906, when it purchased acreage for their campus. Alonzo (A.L.) Sledge, a former slave, served as the President of the Board of Directors from 1906-1916. Sledge was elected as a State Representative, from Washington County, to the Texas Legislature in November 1878 and served from January 14, 1879, until January 11, 1881. The college's inaugural class began in 1905 with ten students. By 1913, 130 students were enrolled. Classes from elementary to high school were offered as well as Normal School education, where the students could earn a certification to become schoolteachers. Additional classes included shorthand, typewriting, bookkeeping, commercial law, business arithmetic, correspondence, agriculture, horticulture, mechanics, and girls' industrial education department with sewing, housekeeping, cooking, laundering, food preparation, physiology and personal hygiene, piano, organ, and vocal music. The Brenham Normal and Industrial College discontinued its educational operations in 1927; however, the Theological Department continued to give certifications in pastoral leadership, ushers, deacons, religious ethics, Sunday school superintendents and teachers and evangelizing. The college is an important reminder of African American educational efforts in the early 20th century. (2015)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Independence and Old Baylor Park — 10 mi
  A crossroads north of Brenham that was the richest town in Texas when it won Baylor University in 1845, refused the railroad, and lost the college to Waco and Belton in 1886.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 17 mi
  The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.
• Star of the Republic Museum — 17 mi
  A star-shaped museum of the Republic of Texas years, 1836 to 1846, built at Washington-on-the-Brazos after a Brenham campaign and opened on March 1, 1970.
• Round Top and Festival Hill — 20 mi
  A German village on the old La Bahía Road, named for a house tower, with an 1867 stone church, a Fourth of July kept since 1851 and a concert hall a pianist built without blueprints.

More markers nearby

• Site of Masonic Academy — 0.4 mi
• Brenham Fire Department — 0.5 mi
• First Baptist Church — 0.7 mi
• First Methodist Church — 0.8 mi