Crawford Schools

Crawford's Black students are the part of this story the Handbook can place in context. The Handbook of Texas says that in the 1920s Black teachers in Texas earned less than White teachers, and Black schools were often one-room buildings with one teacher. Brown v. Board of Education declared separate but equal schools unconstitutional in 1954, and in 1956 Texas voters approved a referendum opposing compulsory attendance in integrated schools. The plaque dates Crawford's school for African American students to 1905 and its integration to 1965, eleven years after Brown.

What the plaque says

Crawford Schools Educational efforts in Old Crawford (2 mi. E), also known as Tonk Crossing, began in the 1870s. There, John H. Gouldy, Dr. J.B. Cranfill and other early teachers conducted classes in a one-room schoolhouse. When the town relocated here along a line of the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe railroad in the 1880s, a schoolhouse was among the first buildings constructed. The one-room structure served additionally as a meeting place for church services and town gatherings. in 1886, the local free school combined with Crawford College, a private operation, to form the Crawford Public Schools. Trustees added two rooms to the schoolhouse, and three teachers taught classes through grade seven. Other grades and facilities were added over the years as the school population increased. Crawford Independent School District formed in 1894, and trustees built new facilities on the city's western border at this location in 1903. Two years later, a school for African American students began with Mona Boyd as the first teacher. Dramatic growth for the Crawford schools began in the 1920s with consolidations, the start of school bus service and expansion of the main campus. Among the rural schools that merged with Crawford over the years were Bellview, Morgan Branch, Tonk Creek, Prairie Chapel, Center Hill, Osage and Highland. The African American school, located on the southeast side of town, burned in 1951, and students attended classes in McGregor until integration in 1965. From 1947 to 2004, Crawford ISD had just three superintendents, and each provided leadership and consistency to the district's schools. From pioneer days to the present, residents of Crawford have supported quality education, making it a priority within the community. (2005)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mother Neff State Park — 14 mi
  A Leon River park that grew from six acres Isabella Neff left the state in her 1921 will, where Civilian Conservation Corps Company 817 built a stone tower, a pavilion and roads in the 1930s.
• Waco Mammoth National Monument — 17 mi
  A bone bed on the Bosque River where a nursery herd of at least 19 Columbian mammoths was trapped and drowned by floodwater 65,000 to 72,000 years ago, left in place under a dig shelter.
• Bosque Museum — 19 mi
  A Clifton museum holding what it calls the largest repository of Norwegian artifacts in the South and Southwest, with Bosque County finds some 10,000 years old and a log cabin built by the Olson family.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 19 mi
  The 1906 bottling plant of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company, built where Dr Pepper outgrew a Waco drugstore soda fountain, now the Dr Pepper Museum.

More markers nearby

• St. Paul Lutheran Church — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Crawford — 0.3 mi
• First United Methodist Church of Crawford — 0.3 mi
• Crawford — 0.5 mi