I. M. Terrell (Part 2): The Where

During Isaiah Milligan Terrell’s (see Part 1) thirty-three years as an educator in Fort Worth, he served as principal in only two buildings. He never served as principal in the building that today bears his name. Those three buildings were located within thirteen blocks of each other east of downtown in what was once the center of Fort Worth’s African-American community.

Two of the buildings still stand.

When Fort Worth opened its public school system in 1882, African-American students attended class in two rented churches. But in 1883 African-American students got their own school building in the Third Ward on the east side of downtown. School superintendent Alexander Hogg named I. M. Terrell principal of East Ninth Street Colored School, which taught grades one through eleven.

The location of the school was not conducive to student concentration. Maps show that the school was sandwiched between six railroad tracks. Within three blocks were two railroad roundhouses, a cotton compress, a planing mill, and a grain elevator. The noise, smell, and soot in an unair-conditioned building with the windows raised in warm weather must have been considerable.

On the map note the “WC”s (water closets) at the school and grain elevator.

In fact, in 1894 the Fort Worth Gazette reported that the school was subject to so much noise, especially railroad noise, that the school board was considering relocating the school to “a more quiet neighborhood.”

That did not happen until 1906. The 1883 East Ninth Street Colored School building was moved—by a steam-powered tractor—two thousand feet east to East 12th Street at Steadman Street.

I. M. Terrell remained as principal, but the school in its new location was renamed and promoted: It became “Colored High School (School No. 11).” It was also called “North Side Colored School” to distinguish it from James E. Guinn’s South Side Colored School.

In 1910 a brick building replaced the 1883 wooden building. At ceremonies opening the new building principal Terrell was praised for his “energy, unselfishness, and conservatism.”

The 1883 wooden building was dismantled.

The 1910 building was later expanded with wings on each end. Today the building houses the Fort Worth Housing Authority.

In 1921, six years after I. M. Terrell left Fort Worth to head Prairie View State Normal and Industrial College, the Colored High School was renamed for him.

Now let’s move south six blocks to an area known as “Chambers Hill,” so called because Andrew J. Chambers (photo from Texas State Preservation Board) lived there on a large parcel of land. In the 1880s Chambers had begun developing his land as the “Chambers addition.” The addition was bisected by Chambers Street. His own house was located at East 18th Street and Chambers Street. Note that in 1889 Chambers sold lots to speculators who included Robert McCart.

A. J. Chambers was not only a real estate man. In 1883-1885 he represented Fort Worth in the Texas House of Representatives.

Chambers died in 1893.

Fast-forward to 1909. The school district needed a new school for white students in the Third Ward. So, the school board bought land in Chambers addition at East 18th Street and Chambers Street. If that location sounds familiar, it was where A. J. Chambers himself had lived.

The school board decided to name the new school for Chambers because while in the legislature he had supported the state’s public school fund and the state university.

A. J. Chambers School opened in 1910.

The building, like the 1910 Colored High School building, is still standing.

By 1930 schools for African-American students were located in all four parts of town, although the Guinn school on Rosedale was the southernmost. The African-American school at the corner of Gay and East 19th streets originally was the Third Ward school for whites, also called the “Reagan School,” probably in honor of John H. Reagan, who was a U.S. senator from Texas and postmaster general of the Confederacy. Reagan was the last surviving member of Jefferson Davis’s cabinet. Several public schools in Texas were named for him.

When demographics changed in a segregated school system, the enrollment of schools also changed. Just as the school board had changed the Reagan School from white to black, in 1931 the board changed the Chambers School from white to black as the demographics of the area served by the school changed. A. J. Chambers School became “East Eighteenth Street Colored School No. K.” (Why “No. K”? Beats me.)

The change was made despite the fact that white parents protested that their children would have to travel farther to other schools.

Fast-forward to 1936. The Fort Worth school district was busy with six construction projects: Poly, Arlington Heights, and North Side high schools, a new wing for D. McRae Elementary, a new building for the Guinn school, and $149,000 for I. M. Terrell High School.

No, not the I. M. Terrell High School on East 12th Street at Steadman Street. The history of Fort Worth’s oldest surviving school buildings is seldom that simple.

In 1937 I. M. Terrell High School moved from the building at East 12th Street at Steadman Street to the Chambers/East Eighteenth Street Colored School No. K building, and a large addition was built on the north side of the Chambers building. The old I. M. Terrell High School building became George Washington Carver Elementary/Junior High School for African Americans before housing the Fort Worth Housing Authority.

The Chambers/East Eighteenth Street Colored School No. K/I. M. Terrell High School building was expanded again in 1956 and 1959.

I. M. Terrell High School remained the only Fort Worth high school for African Americans until 1956, when Dunbar Junior High was made a junior-senior high school.

In 1973 factors such as integration and the need for specialized schools caused the closure of I. M. Terrell High School. The building later housed the Fort Worth Skills Center and I. M. Terrell Elementary School.

Today the expanded campus houses I. M. Terrell Academy for STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math] and VPA [Visual and Performing Arts].

The little building that started it all—the 1910 A. J. Chambers building—today is a small part of the I. M. Terrell complex.

This satellite photo shows the locations of (1) East Ninth Street Colored School, (2) Colored High School/I. M. Terrell High School, and (3) A. J. Chambers School/I. M. Terrell High School/I. M. Terrell Academy for STEM and VPA.

Marker at I. M. Terrell Academy for STEM and VPA.

No one alive today was a student under Isaiah Milligan Terrell. But a school and a street bear his name, and his legacy lives on in the thousands of students who have been educated in the buildings named for him.

Posts About Education in Fort Worth
Fort Worth’s Street Gang

 

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