Site of Samuel Huston College

The college's first president, Reuben Shannon Lovinggood, arrived in the fall of 1900, and the first term opened with eighty students; H. S. White of Michigan gave 500 books. Enrollment reached 517 by 1906 in courses from elementary grades through college, blacksmithing to preaching. The campus grew to fifteen acres in 1916. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools accredited it in 1934, and the American Medical Association accepted its premedical course. After the 1952 merger, Huston-Tillotson was the only college for African Americans in Central Texas until Brown v. Board of Education.

What the plaque says

Site of Samuel Huston College Samuel Huston College traces its history to 1876 when the Rev. George O. Richardson founded a college in Dallas for the education of African American youth. St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church was leased for the private school, named Andrews Normal School. The school moved to Austin in 1878 and held classes in the Wesley Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church. With the help of the Freedman's Aid Society, adopted Andrews Normal School in 1878 and the name was changed to West Texas Conference School. Nearly six acres were acquired on East 12th Street in 1880 for the original campus. The school was renamed in 1887 for Samuel Huston of Marengo, Iowa, who donated property worth $10,000. Funding difficulties caused the school to close several times in the 1880s. t reopened in 1900 at the same site. Organized as a private educational corporation in 1910, it became a senior college in 1926, and merged with Tillotson College in 1952. Relocated to the Tillotson College campus on Chicon Street, the school was renamed Huston-Tillotson College. It continues a distinguished history of education. (1996)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• French Legation State Historic Site — 0.3 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.
• George Washington Carver Museum — 0.5 mi
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.
• Texas State Cemetery — 0.5 mi
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.
• Texas State Capitol — 0.6 mi
  Austin's fourth statehouse, a Renaissance Revival capitol of 1888 that stands 311 feet to its Goddess of Liberty and was restored after the 1983 fire.

More markers nearby

• Brackenridge Hospital — 0.2 mi
• Victory Grill — 0.3 mi
• Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church — 0.3 mi
• Joseph Baker — 0.3 mi