| Marker Text |
In the years before Texas became an independent republic, Hispanic and Irish settlers established ranches and farms in this area. Their children received education at home or in community schools. Bee County organized in 1858 and in 1860 Maryville (Beeville) became the county seat. Beeville citizens incorporated in 1893 to form a school district, opening a new school the next year; St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church founded St. Mary's Academy in 1898. Outside the city, ranchers, who with their employees represented a majority of the area's Hispanic population, established schools on their property, and rural communities continued maintaining small schools. The Beeville school district built the A.C. Jones High School in 1911. At that same time, the district built the West Side School for the city's growing Mexican American population. The two-room frame building served students until 1932, when a brick schoolhouse was erected one block west at this site, facing Jackson Street. Mexican American students integrated into Jones High School in 1938, and lower grades integrated by the mid-1940s. During that era, two organizations, the American G.I. Forum and the League of United Latin American Citizens, began challenging inequality toward Mexican Americans. Their cases before Texas courts in the 1940s and 1950s barred segregation of Mexican American students. In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education did the same for African American students, who in Beeville attended the Lott-Canada School for many years. Since integration, the school district has continued to utilize the West Side, or Jackson, school building. The former school is remembered for its strong curriculum, educators and students, who succeeded despite segregated conditions. (2005) |
