James E. Guinn School

The marker follows James Guinn and his building. The Handbook of Texas adds his household. His wife, Emma Guinn, earned a teaching degree at Prairie View in 1898, became principal of North Fort Worth Colored School and taught at the school named for her husband until her death in 1949. Two grandsons attended it. James E. Guinn III was the first Black surgeon to operate at a White Fort Worth hospital, and Edward William Guinn the first Black member of the city council. The Handbook says the 1917 building was demolished in 1986.

What the plaque says

James E. Guinn School After Fort Worth public schools were organized in the fall of 1882, black students continued to be taught in black churches for more than a year. The city completed a schoolhouse for blacks on E. 9th Street at Elm in December 1883. The son of a former slave, James Elvis Guinn was born in Fort Worth. Though neither of them could read nor write, his parents placed a great value on education, and James attended Fort Worth's early schools for blacks. He later pursued a college degree and became a professor of chemistry at Prairie View College, now Prairie View A&M University. Guinn returned to Fort Worth as principal of South Side Colored School in 1900. Construction of a new three-story brick school building, designed by the prominent architectural firm of Sanguinet and Staats, began at the corner of Louisiana and Rosedale Avenues in April 1917. Shortly before its completion, Guinn died on July 11, 1917. Six days later the school board voted to name the new school building James E. Guinn School in his honor. It was the largest black school in Fort Worth in 1930. After sixty-three years of service it, it was closed in 1980. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tarrant County Courthouse — 1.8 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 2.8 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.
• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 2.8 mi
  A hall of fame begun in Hereford in 1975 to honor rodeo women, widened in 1977 to Western heritage, and housed in Fort Worth's Cultural District since 2002.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 4.2 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.

More markers nearby

• Baker Funeral Home — steps away
• St. Andrews United Methodist Church of Fort Worth — 0.4 mi
• Beth-el Congregation — 0.7 mi
• Broadway Baptist Church of Ft. Worth — 0.7 mi