Longview Womack High School

Longview's Negro High School, built in 1930, served more than 200 students, according to a history of Longview schools. J. L. Everhart was principal of the school and of Mary C. Womack High School from 1945 to 1970. That history dates the fire to 1948, after which Womack opened at Boyd and Luckett streets with the Leopard as its mascot. On July 4, 1970, 36 school buses in the district's yard were bombed, and that fall Black students from Womack and three elementary schools moved to formerly white schools. The Womack building was torn down in 1983.

What the plaque says

Longview Womack High School BUILT IN 1930 ON GUM STREET, LONGVIEW NEGRO HIGH SCHOOL SERVED AS A SECONDARY SCHOOL FOR AFRICAN-AMERICANS. IN 1946, IT WAS DESTROYED BY FIRE, AND A NEW 16-ROOM SCHOOL WAS BUILT AT BOYD AND LUCKETT STREETS. THE SCHOOL'S NAME CHANGED CA. 1959-1960 TO HONOR AN OUTSTANDING TEACHER, MRS. MARY C. WOMACK. LESLIE J. WHITE AND J. L. EVERHART SERVED AS THE SCHOOL'S DEDICATED PRINCIPALS AND WERE BOTH RECOGNIZED BY THE EAST TEXAS BLACK EDUCATORS HALL OF FAME. WHEN A FEDERAL DESEGREGATION ORDER WAS ISSUED, THE SCHOOL WAS CLOSED AND LATER TORN DOWN. DESPITE THE CHALLENGING TIMES, LONGVIEW/WOMACK HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATED AND DEVELOPED ITS AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDENTS INTO VALUABLE CONTRIBUTORS TO SOCIETY. (2011)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• East Texas Oil Museum — 11 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 21 mi
  A volunteer-run museum beside the pink granite cenotaph for the March 1937 school gas explosion, holding a model of the school, a blackboard from that day and an odorizer device.
• Starr Family Home State Historic Site — 22 mi
  Maplecroft, the 1871 Greek Revival house Frank Starr built in Marshall, with Ruth Starr Blake's glass and china, an 1880s kitchen restored in 2019 and a retirement home built for a formerly enslaved person.
• Harrison County Historical Museum — 23 mi
  Galleries in Marshall's 1901 courthouse that run from the Caddo to the present, with Wiley College, Lady Bird Johnson's inaugural gown and a military gallery across the square in Memorial City Hall.

More markers nearby

• Bethel Baptist Church — 0.3 mi
• Site of James S. Hogg Newspaper — 0.7 mi
• 1919 Longview Race Riot — 0.7 mi
• Oliver H. Pegues — 0.7 mi