Washington School

Washington's first school for Black children predates this building by a century. The Grimble Bell School opened in the 1830s, by Wikipedia's account the parish's first school for African Americans, and white vigilantes forced it closed in 1860. The schoolhouse on this site, the third built here, dates from about 1936, and the town's landmark list now calls it the Old Schoolhouse Antique Mall at 123 Church Street. Its gym holds a cafe, a use no one planning a classroom in the 1930s would have guessed.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Le Vieux Village and the Venus House — 5.7 mi
  A heritage park in Opelousas built around the Venus House of about 1791, the home of a free Creole woman of color, Marie Francois Venus, with an old schoolhouse, Methodist church and the visitor center's zydeco music exhibit.
• Prairie Acadian Cultural Center — 24 mi
  A National Park Service center in Eunice on the Cajun prairie, with exhibits on the Acadians who settled the prairies, a Courir de Mardi Gras display, free music and cooking demonstrations, and the shuttered Liberty Theatre nearby.
• Atchafalaya Welcome Center — 27 mi
  A state welcome center inside the Atchafalaya Basin, the nation's largest river swamp, with exhibits on Basin history and life, a film, a crawfishing boat and French-speaking staff.
• Louisiana State Penitentiary Museum — 36 mi
  The Angola museum outside the penitentiary gate, opened in 1997 on the history of crime and punishment in Louisiana, on ground where convicts were leased out as what 64 Parishes calls legal slave labor.

More markers nearby

• Washington — 0.2 mi
• Bayou Courtableau — 0.2 mi
• Leon Wolff Mercantile — 0.3 mi
• Washington Museum — 0.3 mi