Site of Hilliard High School

The school offered only eight grades for years, so students wanting more went to Prairie View, Houston, Galveston or Kendleton. The PTA raised money for what the district would not buy, including a teacher's salary for grades eight through ten, and a swimming pool. In 1941 A. G. Hilliard II proposed the school as a recreation site for Black soldiers from Camp Hulen, who could not use the USO. When the schools integrated, Black teachers, who had been paid less than white teachers, learned of their transfers to the white school. Hilliard closed as a high school in 1967.

What the plaque says

Site of Hilliard High School Site of Hilliard High School The Bay City African American community established a school in the 1890s, and A.A. Deleon served as its first teacher. Three others, A.G. Hilliard, A.P. Allen and J.J. Grundy, began shortly after the school opened. By 1904, the school's enrollment had outgrown the first building, so the community attained a larger one. The new school, a two-story frame structure, was named after noted educator Booker T. Washington and was adopted by the Bay City School District in 1905. By 1926, there were 225 students and only four teachers. Hilliard continued as teacher and later as principal at the school. Born in Georgia in 1863, he came to Texas in 1871 with his parents, Bunk and Mary, former slaves who strongly valued education. After his graduation from the Oakland Normal School, which opened in Gonzales in 1882 to train African American teachers, Mary encouraged her son to continue his education at Prairie View State Normal College. He taught in Bay City for 28 of his 48 years in education. He died in 1936 and is buried in Bay City's Eastview Cemetery with his wife Pearl. Recognizing Hilliard's contribution to the school, the board of trustees renamed it Hilliard High School after he died. His son A.G. Hilliard II (d. 1983) then became principal. The ever-growing school needed a new buidling by the 1940s. Acclaimed architect Wyatt C. Hedrick designed a new facility, finished in 1948 at this site, where it served as Hilliard High School until 1967. The district then used it for two years as a junior high. Over the years, the school produced two state champion football teams and many other award-winning students, reflecting the community's pride and goals for its children. (2002)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site — 20 mi
  A sugar and cotton plantation on the San Bernard River whose enslaved builders and their descendants left one of the best-preserved African American archeological sites in Texas.
• Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site — 24 mi
  A Brazos sugar plantation built by enslaved people for the Patton family, later leased convict labor and Hogg family oil, now told through Rachel Patton and Sarah Ford.

More markers nearby

• Mother Zion Missionary Baptist Church — 0.4 mi
• First Baptist Church of Bay City — 0.8 mi
• St. Mark's Episcopal Church — 0.8 mi
• Dr. Henry Hofmann Loos — 0.9 mi