Original Site of Uvalde High School

Uvalde's schools later became a civil rights battleground. A chapter of the Mexican American Youth Organization formed in the city in 1968, and on April 14, 1970, more than 500 Mexican American students walked out; the protest lasted six weeks, and the school board asked the Texas Rangers to help control it. Senator Walter F. Mondale, who chaired the Senate committee on equal educational opportunity, came to Uvalde on July 30, 1970, and criticized city officials in an interview in the Leader-News. On November 23, 1973, a federal administrative judge ruled the county's schools still segregated.

What the plaque says

Original Site of Uvalde High School Four years after Uvalde became a railroad shipping point, the people of the city built their first school building. Completed in 1885, the facility served all grade levels. The picketed structure was constructed of cedar logs and erected on this site, which was donated by the town's founder, Reading W. Black. The demand for space quickly required a new four-room two-story structure. Four more rooms were added in 1891, the year of the first graduating class. Graduation ceremonies, which took place after completion of the tenth grade, were sometimes held in the Uvalde Opera House. The school building burned to the ground in 1898. Determined to continue to meet the educational needs of their children, Uvalde citizens erected a new building on this site in 1900. The two-story edifice cost $10,000 to build, and there was some controversy over its size. By 1907, Uvalde had become an independent school district, and even the modern 1900 structure was no longer adequate for the rapidly growing area. Plans for a larger Uvalde High School on West Main Street were carried out in 1908. The educational investments of the early citizens of Uvalde have been multiplied in the graduates of Uvalde High School. For more than a century, Uvalde students have become valuable community members. (1998) Incise on base: Gretchen Catron, Jane Knapik, Donna McDonough

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Uvalde Grand Opera House — steps away
  An 1891 Victorian opera house on the Uvalde square with a turret and a dragon weathervane, once owned by John Nance Garner and still staging volunteer theater upstairs.
• Briscoe-Garner Museum — 0.3 mi
  The Uvalde house of John Nance Garner, the vice president who made the office a power in Congress, now a free museum to him and to Governor Dolph Briscoe.
• Fort Inge Historical Site — 2.7 mi
  A county park on the Leona River below a 140-foot volcanic plug, where an army post guarded the new road to El Paso from 1849 to 1869 and Texas Rangers camped after.

More markers nearby

• First Presbyterian Church of Uvalde — steps away
• Captain William Benson — steps away
• L. Schwartz Company — steps away
• Uvalde Methodist Church — steps away