Site of Bartlett Colored School

A newspaper shows the school as the plaque's story reached its peak. The Bartlett Tribune and News of May 23, 1952, announced commencement for Monday evening, May 26, with baccalaureate the Sunday before. Six students were to receive diplomas, led by valedictorian Doretta Mae Smith and salutatorian Francis Hanible. F. R. Rice, principal of Blackshear School in Austin, was to speak. The plaque dates the first graduation to May 1949, when the school was already a twelve-grade system, three years before this class.

What the plaque says

Site of Bartlett Colored School Site of Bartlett Colored School The farming community of Bartlett was founded in 1882 when the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad reached the town, which is situated on the county line between Bell and Williamson counties. By 1912, a second railway served the town, and Bartlett became a shipping point for area farm and ranch products. When the Bartlett Public School built a brick schoolhouse in 1909, the school district moved its existing six-room frame classroom building to this site to become the first local school for African American students. When the six-room schoolhouse burned in 1919, Dave Johnson was given the contract to build a new one-story, four-room structure using recycled lumber. Decades later, in 1945, half of a building from the Goodeville School District was moved to the site to serve as a shop and vocational agriculture building. The Bartlett Colored School, unaccredited at that time, only went through the tenth grade; few students from area rural populations could get to the schoolhouse, and fewer still made the trip to Temple or Austin to complete their education and graduate. Parents and teachers, united through a parent teacher association formed in 1933, continued improvements and attracted a dedicated couple from Prairie View A&M to move to Bartlett in 1946. Gentry "Prof" Powell, Sr. (1909-1976), and his wife acted as principals, teachers and coaches. They brought in students from the area with a school bus and driver granted by the school district at the start of the 1946-47 school year. By summer 1947, attendance had doubled to more than 160, and the school became an accredited 12-grade system. With a strong curriculum and new sports programs, the Bartlett school grew, moving in 1949 to the north side of the city, on Cryer Drive. (2003) [1st extra plaque] Dedicated principals who served at Bartlett Colored School included G. B. Blackburn (1909-1911) S. E. Cooper (1911-1945) and John R. Powell, Ph.D. (1945-1946) [2nd extra plaque] Under Marguerite C. Powell, Principal 1947-1965, the 10-grade, unaccredited system became a Class B, Accredited 12-grade school and in May 1949 held first graduation ceremonies.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Williamson County Courthouse — 18 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 — 19 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.
• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 22 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.
• The Round Rock — 24 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.

More markers nearby

• First United Methodist Church of Bartlett — 0.5 mi
• Bartlett Grammar School — 0.7 mi
• City of Bartlett — 0.7 mi
• First Baptist Church of Bartlett — 0.7 mi