Mina Ward School

George I. Sanchez, the professor behind the Delgado suit, was born in Albuquerque in 1906 to families settled in New Mexico since early colonial days. He began teaching at sixteen, at a rancheria about fifty miles from the city. His 1931 master's thesis at the University of Texas was one of the earliest studies to question standardized tests for Spanish-speaking children. He studied rural schooling in Mexico, surveyed Taos County for the book Forgotten People, and fought for equal school funding in New Mexico before joining the University of Texas faculty in 1940.

What the plaque says

Mina Ward School Bastrop was established as a Mexican municipality (later renamed Mina) in 1832. As in many Texas towns, early 20th century grade schools here were segregated into three campuses, with separate facilities for Mexican American, African American and Anglo American students. Bastrop established a school for Mexican Americans in the 1910s, and in 1933 built the Mina Ward School on land east of Main Street and north of the M-K-T railroad tracks. The one-story yellow frame schoolhouse had classroom space and a stage for one or two teachers educating eight grades of students from Bastrop and the surrounding rural area. In 1947, Samuel and Nemesia García asked school officials to let their granddaughter attend the Anglo American school, but the request was denied. On Nov. 17, 1947, on behalf of twenty students in four local school districts, San Antonio attorney Gustavo (Gus) C. Garcia, supported by University of Texas professor George I. Sanchez and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), filed a class action lawsuit titled Minerva Delgado, et al. vs. Bastrop Independent School District of Bastrop County, et al. The complaint accused the schools of depriving children of equal educational opportunities. At the hearing on Jun. 15, 1948, federal judge Ben H. Rice issued a summary judgment, ruling the segregation of children of "Mexican or other Latin American descent" was "arbitrary and discriminatory and in violation of plaintiff's constiutional rights as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States." The Mina Ward School closed, but statewide the decision preserved segregation of African American students and any first graders who did not exhibit English-language proficiency. The school and the Delgado v. Bastrop case are remembered for their significant contributions to the Civil Rights movement and for providing greater opportunities for generations of Texans. (2015)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bastrop State Park — 2.1 mi
  The westernmost loblolly pines in the United States, cut off from the East Texas forest by a hundred miles of post oak, burned almost entirely in 2011 and growing back.
• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 20 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.
• McKinney Falls State Park — 24 mi
  Limestone falls on Onion Creek inside Austin, where people camped under a rock overhang for thousands of years and a financier of the Texas Revolution built his stone ranch house.
• George Washington Carver Museum — 26 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.

More markers nearby

• Site of Bastrop Military Institute — 0.5 mi
• Bastrop Methodist Church — 0.6 mi
• First National Bank of Bastrop — 0.7 mi
• Home Town of Texas Confederate Major Joseph D. Sayers — 0.8 mi