In the nineteenth century he was the first principal hired to supervise African-American students in the new public school system of segregated Fort Worth. And he would hold that job into the twentieth century.
Isaiah Milligan Terrell was born in Grimes County in 1859 to Alexander and Nancy Terrell.
Alexander Terrell had been born into slavery in 1834 in South Carolina and had assumed the surname of his white owner, Joel W. Terrell. Joel Terrell and his slaves moved to Grimes County in 1851. Alexander married Nancy O’Neil in 1855.
In 1871 Alexander Terrell, by then a blacksmith, had an account in Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, chartered in 1865 by Congress with the goal, as African-American statesman Frederick Douglass put it, of instilling in the minds of former slaves “lessons of sobriety, wisdom, and economy and to show them how to rise in the world.”
According to the Texas State Historical Association, I. M. Terrell received his early education from two missionaries. In 1881 he graduated from Straight University, a historically African-American college in New Orleans, and took a job teaching in Grimes County.
The next year, 1882, Fort Worth founded its public school system. Superintendent Alexander Hogg hired Terrell, age twenty-three, to teach the city’s African-American students. In the beginning, classes for both white and black students were held in rented buildings. The city rented two churches to serve as schools for African-American students, Terrell teaching in one church and Henry H. Butler in the other. (Butler, born about 1845 to slave parents, served in the Union Army and moved to Fort Worth in 1875. In 1940 the Butler Place public housing project [now closed] east of downtown—now part of the Butler Place Historic District—would be named for him.)
This report on Fort Worth school attendance in 1883 shows that private schools were still popular, including those of Belle Burchill and Clara Walden. The Baptist church listed here may have been Mount Gilead Baptist Church (the Terrells were members). The Methodist church may have been Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Both were on the east side of downtown.
In 1883 the city built its first schoolhouses—one each in the First, Second, and Third wards and a school for African-American students: the East Ninth Street Colored School for grades one through eleven. The school was located in the Third Ward on the east side of downtown. The area immediately east of downtown was the center of Fort Worth’s African-American community.
Hogg appointed Terrell principal of the new school. Henry H. Butler was one of the school’s first teachers.
In this report on a tour of the schools by Superintendent Hogg on the first day of class in 1884 note the teacher Mrs. I. M. Terrell. I. M. Terrell and Marcelite Landry had met at Straight University and had married in 1883.
I. M. Terrell didn’t take summers off. And he was active in the education of not just students but also teachers. For several summers he supervised normal schools conducted in Fort Worth and other Texas cities to train African-American teachers.
The 1889 faculty of Ninth Street Colored School, from the left: Clara O. Harris, principal I. M. Terrell, Miss Amanda F. Woodard, Mrs. Marcelite Terrell, C. M. Thompson, Henry H. Butler, V. L. Moore, and Mrs. E. M. Wheeler. (Photo from Fort Worth Independent School District.)
By 1896 Fort Worth still had just one school for African Americans. Mrs. Terrell and Amanda Woodard were still on the faculty.
Fast-forward to 1907. Fort Worth now had two schools for African Americans. The East Ninth Street Colored School building had been moved to East 12th Street at Steadman Street and designated “Colored High School.” It was also called “North Side Colored School” to distinguish it from James E. Guinn’s South Side Colored School located southeast of downtown.
In 1907 the east-west Texas & Pacific railroad tracks were the educational equator for African-American students: Students living north of the tracks and high school and seventh-grade students living south of the tracks attended the Colored High School. Students of grades one through six living south of the tracks attended Guinn’s South Side Colored School.
By 1909 Fort Worth had four schools for African Americans, and I. M. Terrell was both principal of the Colored High School and superintendent of “Fort Worth colored schools.” Emma Guinn, wife of James, was principal of North Fort Worth Colored School on Yellow Row. Yellow Row was an African-American enclave located between the Cotton Belt tracks and the West Fork of the Trinity River near Oakwood Cemetery.
Fast-forward five years. By 1914 I. M. Terrell was superintendent of seven schools in addition to his Colored High School. His wife was still on his faculty. The Guinns were still principals. And see Amanda F. McCoy, principal of West Side Colored School on Cooper Street? In the 1880s and 1890s she had been Miss Amanda F. Woodard at East Ninth Street Colored School. In 1940 West Side Colored School would be renamed for Mrs. Amanda F. McCoy.
By 1896 the Terrells had moved from their home on East 3rd Street a few blocks from their school to Jennings Avenue on the near South Side. They probably were the only African Americans living on Jennings Avenue in 1896 because by 1914 they were one of only two “(c)” households on that street. City directories identified African Americans with a “(c)” until 1924.
In 1915, after thirty-three years in Fort Worth schools, I. M. Terrell resigned as principal of the Colored High School and superintendent of Fort Worth’s schools for African Americans to become principal of Prairie View State Normal and Industrial College.
The Star-Telegram wrote: “Following the acceptance of Terrell’s resignation the school board adopted a resolution praising him as an educator and leader of his race. He was thanked in the resolution for the service he has performed in the colored public schools of Fort Worth.”
After three years at Prairie View, in 1918 Terrell became president of Houston College in Houston.
In 1921 Fort Worth’s Colored High School was renamed for Terrell.
Terrell returned to Fort Worth often. A year after he left Fort Worth he had returned to hand out diplomas at the graduation exercises of the Colored High School.
In 1923 Terrell became superintendent of Union Hospital in Houston. In 1926 he became superintendent of the new Houston Negro Hospital (later “Riverside General Hospital”).
Isaiah Milligan Terrell died in Houston on September 28, 1931.
He is buried in Houston.
Isaiah Milligan Terrell witnessed—and made—a lot of education history in Fort Worth, but he did not live to witness this milestone: On September 8, 1967—thirty-five years, eleven months, and eleven days after I. M. Terrell died—Fort Worth public schools became fully integrated.
(Footnote: When she retired in 1997 Major General Marcelite Jordan Harris, great-granddaughter of I. M. and Marcelite Terrell, was the highest-ranking woman in the U.S. Air Force.)
