Austin’s only Black high school is rooted in the 1880s. Anderson High School in Austin, Texas, serves as a case study for community cohesion and pride in the face of institutional racism. Original Anderson High School located on Olive Street. Only under threat of desegregation lawsuits did the white power structure of the South ever invest money in its public school system. Institutional racism as practiced by white politicians and school board members meant that Black schools always received the least amount of funding and were often the first to close to achieve a measure of racial integration. The African American schools served as centers of their community, provided employment and leadership opportunities for Black citizens, and showcased pride in Black student achievements. Board of Education desegregation decision, the vast majority of southern schools remained segregated by race until the 1970s. Despite a brief experiment with integrated schools during Reconstruction and the landmark 1954 Brown v. Ultimately that effort failed, and a strong African American community center was lost to continued discrimination when attempting school system integration.Īfrican American public school education in the South has roots in the Freedmen’s Bureau established after the Civil War to educate millions of former slaves. Today, the building sits on a hill in East Austin as a physical example of the city’s efforts to equalize its segregated school system.

However, the Austin Public School system desegregated under a “freedom of choice” plan in 1955, and Black students began attending formerly all-white schools. In order to keep the schools segregated, Austin school officials, in 1953, sought to “equalize” Anderson with a new, modern building that had more classrooms, science laboratory space, an updated heating system, and athletic fields during the middle of school equalization and desegregation lawsuits. In 1950, Austin, Texas had one white high school (Austin High) and one Black high school (L.C.

African American public education had long been neglected in the South in favor of funding white schools, but as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and Black students began winning cases in the courts for equalization or desegregation, Southern politicians finally turned their attention to equalizing primary and secondary public school systems. In the 1950s, states, municipalities, and school districts across the southern United States scrambled to construct new African American schools in order to prove they truly provided “separate but equal” segregated schools. Historic preservation specialist and lead historian at the Texas Department of Transportation

Anderson High School as an Equalization School: 1953-1971” Rebekah Dobrasko

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