Furney Richardson High School

Separate schools for Black children came before 1933. The Handbook of Texas says the school at Grove Island, on the Limestone-Freestone county line, had forty-two Black students in 1893 and thirty-five in 1903, and that by the 1930s it had moved to Furney-Richardson. Under segregation, the 1933 trustees had to consolidate small schools and acquire land for a campus for Black students themselves. Grove Island kept its church and cemetery, which still stood in the late 1980s, while the school and the community around Furney Richardson carried the name on.

What the plaque says

Furney Richardson High School In 1933, trustees of Busby and Grove Island Schools consolidated as a single district for African American children in western Freestone County. Trustees Wesley Madison, J.H. Clemons and Rufus Carter acquired land from the Albert Wright family, and the new campus, named for the first superindendent, opened here that fall with grades through high school. Several businesses opened near the school building to form a rural community. The school became a leading educational institution for African American students in the area. Attendance waned by 1958, when high school classes transferred to Teague; the entire school merged with Teague ten years later. The schoolhouse continued in use as a community center and reunion site. (2008)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site — 13 mi
  Where Limestone County Confederate veterans gathered each summer from 1888, later a water supplier in the Mexia oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site on the Navasota River.
• Old Fort Parker — 13 mi
  A rebuilt 1830s family stockade near the Navasota River, where a May 1836 attack killed men of the Parker settlement and took five captives, among them nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 14 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.

More markers nearby

• William Rufus Boyd, Jr. — 2.6 mi
• Town of Teague — 3.2 mi
• Old Division Point Office for the "Boll Weevil" Railway — 3.2 mi
• Ghost Town of Cotton Gin — 3.8 mi