Richards Colored School

The plaque follows the school from Longstreet to a schoolhouse beside the railroad tracks, and the Handbook of Texas explains why the tracks mattered. Richards began in 1907, when residents of communities near Lake Creek moved to a new Trinity and Brazos Valley Railway line where it crossed the road between Fairview and Longstreet. Some hired log rollers to shift houses and businesses whole. Railway officials named the town for W. E. Richards, a South Texas banker, and the Longstreet post office soon moved there. Richards counted about 500 residents in 1936.

What the plaque says

Richards Colored School In the mid-1800s, area African-American children attended school in nearby Longstreet. The first school in Richards began in St. Thomas Methodist Episcopal Church circa 1913. School moved to the Masonic Lodge Hall before a two-story schoolhouse with auditorium was built near the railroad tracks. Basketball was the primary sporting activity, and county fairs featured competition in agriculture, poetry recital and spelling bees. Fire destroyed three separate schoolhouses from 1920 to 1937. In the 1930s, Richards Colored School absorbed schools from Longstreet and Pineywoods. A new school was built in 1938 and renamed in 1962 for longtime principal, teacher and coach W. E. Hall. It closed in 1966 when schools in Richards integrated. 175 years of Texas Independence * 1836-2011

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site — 9.4 mi
  A cedar-log dogtrot cabin of 1834 on the road through Anderson that grew into a seventeen-room inn and post office for travelers of the Republic, kept by one family until 1976.
• Navasota — 18 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Star of the Republic Museum — 24 mi
  A star-shaped museum of the Republic of Texas years, 1836 to 1846, built at Washington-on-the-Brazos after a Brenham campaign and opened on March 1, 1970.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 24 mi
  The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.

More markers nearby

• Apolonia Cemetery — 5.0 mi
• Shiro Presbyterian Church — 5.6 mi
• Old Oakland Cemetery — 6.2 mi
• Waller Cemetery — 6.4 mi