Sunlight Girls Club

The club's founder was a daughter of Port Lavaca. Naomi Bellfield was born here in 1917, finished Wilkins High School in 1935 under Alice O. Wilkins, and studied at Guadalupe Junior College in Seguin and at Sam Houston College before coming home to teach physical education and homemaking at her old school. When Mrs. Wilkins fell ill, Naomi promised to stay at the school as long as it lasted, and she did, then taught on in the county's schools for a career of 44 years. She married James J. Chase of Cuero in 1955 and died in 1986.

What the plaque says

Sunlight Girls Club When desegregation began in Calhoun County in 1955, many African American students made educational and cultural adjustments. The summer before the 1955-56 school year, long-time educator Naomi B. Chase took a group of students from the all black Alice O. Wilkins school on a picnic to Indianola at the La Salle Monument. With concern for students adjusting to the changes brought on by integration, Mrs. Chase founded the Sunlight Girls Club on January 19, 1960 in her garage. In 1966, the Calhoun County School District provided the Wilkins School cafeteria as the Sunlight Girls' clubhouse, and the group obtained their charter. The objectives of the club were to bridge the gap of integration, to instill and promote finer womanhood, to instill principles of honesty, fair play, and justice, to develop good character through precepts and examples, to promote leadership, complete high school, strive for higher education, and to provide scholarships for furtherance of education. The first Sunlight Girls Club formed with fourteen girls, ages nine through sixteen. Regular attendance at school and church were mandatory, and music was an integral part of the organization. To promote growth and achievement, the girls were provided instruction in religious studies, music, typing, first aid, cooking, sewing, and ceramics. In 1964, to continue with the girls' growth and exposure, Edna Brown organized a band with instruments donated by the community. Approximately 312 girls were members of the Sunlight Girls Club during its 40 years of existence. Both sponsors and directors helped open the doors that parents could only dream for their children. (2013)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Half Moon Reef Lighthouse and Linnville — 1.9 mi
  The last screw-pile lighthouse of the Texas coast, brought ashore at Port Lavaca, a town founded by refugees from Linnville, the port Buffalo Hump's Comanches burned in August 1840.
• Indianola — 9.9 mi
  The site of Texas's second port, where Morgan's steamships, Army freight and the first refrigerated beef passed until the hurricanes of 1875 and 1886, now mostly under Matagorda Bay.
• Matagorda Island — 22 mi
  A 38-mile barrier island reached only by boat from Port O'Connor, with a lighthouse of 1852, the ghosts of two towns and a fort, and no water, power or cars.
• Aransas National Wildlife Refuge — 23 mi
  Blackjack Peninsula's refuge on San Antonio Bay, winter home of the only wild migrating flock of whooping cranes, which fell to about fifty birds and now numbers over five hundred.

More markers nearby

• Alice O. Wilkins School — steps away
• Saint Joseph Baptist Church — steps away
• Jefferson Beaumont — steps away
• Wiley George — steps away