Site of Independence School

Independence had a separate school for Black children, beside Liberty Baptist Church. More than a hundred Black members left Independence Baptist Church in 1866 to form that congregation. In 1871 a Brenham paper counted thirteen Black schools and twenty-seven white schools in the county. In the 1920s teachers Mable Orman Heard and Emmie Woods raised $800 with picnics, dinners and dances to match a Rosenwald grant, and the school became a four-room building. It closed in the county's consolidation after 1953, and the building was moved elsewhere.

What the plaque says

Site of Independence School Although private schools were in operation in Independence as early as 1835, tax-supported public schools were not established until the 1870s. In September 1870 the county court ordered that each of the five precincts in the county be divided into two school districts--one for white students and one for black students. The first county school tax was levied in 1874, paving the way for schoolhouse construction. Classes for white students were conducted in a small frame building and in former facilities of Baylor Female Academy until the first public school building was erected on this site on the town square in 1889. By 1937 an average of forty-four students were attending the school, taught by three teachers. The 1889 schoolhouse was destroyed in a 1939 fire, and another building was erected on the same site. Passed by the State Legislature in 1949, the Gilmer-Aiken Law had far-reaching effects on the boundaries and funding of school districts in Texas. Because its enrollment did not meet the new minimum requirements, Independence School was closed in 1953. The last school building later became a private home. (1989)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Independence and Old Baylor Park — 0.6 mi
  A crossroads north of Brenham that was the richest town in Texas when it won Baylor University in 1845, refused the railroad, and lost the college to Waco and Belton in 1886.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 11 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.
• Star of the Republic Museum — 11 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.
• Navasota — 16 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.

More markers nearby

• Site of Mustering of a Unit of Hood's Texas Brigade, C.S.A. — steps away
• Independence Postal Service — steps away
• Independence — steps away
• Old Baptist Church — steps away