Negro Fine Arts School

Iola Bowden was born in Holder, Texas, in 1904 and studied piano at Daniel Baker College and the Washington Conservatory of Music before moving to Georgetown in 1933 to teach at Southwestern University. The Handbook of Texas says the school she founded ran from 1946 to 1966, with an annual recital and a printed program. The first African American student to enroll at Southwestern had studied with her and attended the school. Charles Miller, one of its first students, said she "came across the railroad tracks." She married Walter Chambers in 1955 and retired in 1966.

What the plaque says

Negro Fine Arts School Twenty years before the integration of the Georgetown Public School District, a progressive music professor and her three students embarked on a program to explore a new musical teaching theory and give African American children a chance to learn music. In the fall of 1946, Southwestern University Professor Iola Bowden Chambers and her students began teaching piano lessons to children in the African American community. Through the cooperation of the Georgetown School Board, the First Methodist Church of Georgetown and the Christian Student Association of Southwestern University, the Negro Fine Arts School was funded and championed. During the school's existence, the First Methodist Church, which housed the school, welcomed over 200 students through its doors who participated in the program. The school expanded to provide voice and art lessons, produced a recital at the end of every year, and provided scholarships to its students. The scholarship program provided assistance for every year the recipient was enrolled in college. The school also produced several distinguished alumni who pursued degrees in music and taught other young aspiring musicians. The Negro Fine Arts School not only provided musical avenues and self esteem for its students, but opportunities for other community members to interact with African Americans and to understand the injustice of racial segregation. The Negro Fine Arts School introduced children to the universal language of music and helped pave the way for peaceful school integration that would begin in 1965. (2009)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Williamson County Courthouse — 0.4 mi
  The fifth Williamson County courthouse, a Beaux Arts building by C. H. Page, rises over a Georgetown square of more than 50 Victorian-era buildings.
• Inner Space Cavern — 2.0 mi
  A Georgetown cave found in 1963 when highway engineers drilled test holes, holding Pleistocene fossils and 72-degree rooms that visitors reach by an artificial tunnel.
• The Round Rock — 8.3 mi
  A table-shaped stone in Brushy Creek gave Round Rock its name in 1854; the Chisholm Trail crossed the creek near it, and Old Town stayed behind when the railroad pulled the town east.
• Mount Bonnell — 22 mi
  Austin's old lookout over the Colorado, named by an 1838 traveler, picnicked on by George and Libbie Custer, and reached by a 1939 flight of about 100 limestone steps.

More markers nearby

• Original Site of Southwestern University — steps away
• St. John's United Methodist Church — steps away
• Jessie Daniel Ames — steps away
• Founding of Georgetown — 0.3 mi