Site of Terrell High School

Terrell was Denison's segregated high school for Black students. Grayson County TXGenWeb's Terrell pages include the obituary of E. T. Hardeman, who came to Denison from Bay City in 1938 and, it says, coached Terrell's Dragons to two state championships and a co-title before resigning as head coach in 1954 to become principal. He headed the North Texas Athletic Conference in 1941, won the Silver Beaver award in 1965 and retired in 1968, when Terrell became a middle school. Down Payment, Inc., a race-relations group, named him Man of the Year in 1970.

What the plaque says

Site of Terrell High School Churches and private schools provided early educational training for African American students in Denison until 1886, when Anderson Public High School opened at 530 W. Bond Street. To meet the need for improved and centralized facilities, district trustees opened a new school at this site in 1927. William R. Wims served as the first principal for Terrell School, named in honor of Augustus H. Terrell (d. 1929), noted educator, respected civic leader and first principal of Anderson High. The original school building served all grades and included four classrooms and a small auditorium. Prominent principals Wims, Mason S. Frazier and Evans Tyree Hardeman directed the school's expansion in its formative years to serve a growing community and provide increased educational opportunities. Early teachers received low salaries, but in 1946 Sammye Taylor Savage, elementary teacher at Terrell, successfully sued for pay equalization throughout the district. Terrell students set high standards in academics, the arts and athletics. The school produced many accomplished civic, business and professional leaders, as well as performing artists and athletes. The winning traditions of Terrell's maroon and white Dragons, including state football championships in the 1940s, were a source of community pride and identity. With the implementation of integration came the close of Terrell High School, and the last class graduated in May 1967. Later used for middle and elementary school classes, the campus was razed in 2000, the year a new Terrell Elementary School opened nearby (200 yds. SE). Today, the history of the high school, in existence for forty years, continues to live on in the Terrell name and in the memories of its alumni. (2005)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 1.2 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Eisenhower State Park — 4.7 mi
  A bluff-top park on Lake Texoma opened in 1958 on land leased from the Corps of Engineers, in the Red River country of Fort Johnson, Colbert's Ferry and the Butterfield stages.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 12 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.
• Choctaw Cultural Center — 15 mi
  The Choctaw Nation's history told from the Chahta side at Calera, with galleries from Nanih Waiya to the Trail of Tears and the reservation today, a living village and daily stickball.

More markers nearby

• Site of Saint Francis Xavier Academy — 0.4 mi
• Joseph G. McCoy, Promoter of Chisholm Trail — 0.5 mi
• Present Home of XXI Club — 0.5 mi
• First Presbyterian Church — 0.5 mi