Fidelity Schools

The plaque counts classrooms; the school's story also runs through two educators. In 1922 Freddie A. Emerson was principal and only teacher of the Black school near Main Street, and when Fidelity Manor Elementary opened in 1956 she led it, as Mrs. Freddie Emerson Sandle, until 1960. Arthur C. Lilly, hired in 1947, was the only principal the high school ever had. Before it, Black teenagers here were bused to Phillis Wheatley High in Houston's Fifth Ward, a run the district paid a contractor for in 1934. Five students made up the first graduating class, of 1953-54.

What the plaque says

Fidelity Schools By 1922, African American students of the Clinton community (renamed Galena Park in 1936) attended a school located near the corner of E and Main Streets. By the early 1930s, a building formerly used for white students was moved to the Fidelity Addition, an area of Clinton named for the Fidelity Shipyard. Black students were redirected to this structure, named Fidelity School, which housed eight grades.As African Americans continued to move into Galena Park, the school hired additional teachers and added classrooms. By 1947, Fidelity School included ten classrooms, a library, office, band room, softball field and bus parking area. Fidelity School added high school courses in 1950. The new grades, in addition to further population growth, led to the separation of the school into different levels. Galena Park Independent School District ordered the construction of two buildings; Fidelity Manor High School opened here in 1955, with Fidelity Manor Elementary School opening in an adjacent location in 1956.Fidelity Manor High School students excelled in academics and extracurricular activities; the school won district and state championships in several sports. Noted alumni included educators, military veterans and political leaders. In 1970, desegregation led to the closing of both schools, as students were integrated into the Galena Park school system. Although the two buildings were razed in 1986, the Fidelity Manor Schools continue to be remembered as institutions that provided an invaluable education for African American students in this community for nearly 50 years. (2008)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Emancipation Park — 6.8 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 7.3 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 7.6 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 8.4 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.

More markers nearby

• Near Site of Isaac Batterson Home — 1.0 mi
• Pleasantville — 1.7 mi
• Site of General Offices, Buffalo Bayou, Brazos & Colorado Railroad — 2.1 mi
• Asbury Memorial United Methodist Church — 2.1 mi