L. C. Anderson High School and Integration of Austin's Public Schools

The school moved four times before the Thompson Street building. It served Austin's Black students from 1889 to 1971, first at San Marcos and East Eleventh streets, then Olive Street, then Pennsylvania Avenue at Comal, and from 1953 on Thompson Street. Its Yellow Jackets won Prairie View Interscholastic League football state titles in 1942, 1956, 1957 and 1961. Alumni include Negro leagues star Willie Wells and the football player Dick "Night Train" Lane. After closing, the Thompson Street site housed an alternative learning center, was demolished, and became Eastside Early College High School in 2021.

What the plaque says

L. C. Anderson High School and Integration of Austin's Public Schools To accommodate an increasing African American population, the Austin Public School system (later the AISD) built E.H. Anderson High School in 1909, renaming it L.C. Anderson High School in 1938. The same year, the Austin City Plan restricted construction of future African American schools to the segregated neighborhood east of East Avenue. Post-war population growth and the need to improve its "separate but equal" facilities led AISD in 1953 to build a larger, more modern building for Anderson High School. L.C. Anderson High School became a social center for the entire community, hosting athletics, plays, concerts, and graduations, and despite its disadvantages, the students excelled in academics, athletics, and music. In 1955, the U.S. Supreme Court's second Brown v. Board of Education decision ordered schools nationwide to desegregate "with all deliberate speed." Austin implemented a "freedom of choice" program, allowing students to choose where they attended school, but in 1968, the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare declared AISD noncompliant with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1969, AISD attempted to integrate Anderson, but only 17 white students enrolled. In 1971, when a U.S. district court redrew attendance boundaries, only 40 white students attended, as many white parents would not allow their children to attend Anderson. In 1971, AISD, with the court's approval, closed Anderson High School and ordered the busing of African American students to predominantly white high schools within the district. The closure of L.C. Anderson High School at this location, Austin's only Black public high school, diminished the cohesiveness which made the historic L.C. Anderson High School such a focal point for the surrounding community. (2018)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• George Washington Carver Museum — 0.9 mi
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.
• Texas State Cemetery — 1.1 mi
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 1.4 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.
• LBJ Presidential Library — 1.7 mi
  A ten-story travertine archive on the University of Texas campus holding 45 million pages from a presidency of civil rights laws, the War on Poverty and Vietnam.

More markers nearby

• Rosewood Park — 0.4 mi
• Richard Overton — 0.6 mi
• Parque Zaragoza — 0.6 mi
• Laurine Cecil Anderson — 0.8 mi