BRINGING CHANGE The city is converting a formerly segregated school into a museum. The Montopolis School for Negro Children is established. 1891
replaced with Army barracks. 1935
The building is destroyed by a storm and
Free Public Schools. 1952 school segregation. 1954
The school becomes part of The Austin
Brown v. Board of Education verdict ends
operating the school. 1962
The Austin school district o cially ceases
HISTORY
Montopolis Negro School, which also served as a church, was built from pieces of Army barracks. (Courtesy city of Austin)
process. 1964
Austin ISD begins the desegregation
Montopolis Negro School City to turn once segregated campus into museum T he Montopolis Negro School at 500 Mon- topolis Drive is among the last existing examples of once racially segregated Travis County schools. Now, the city is working to preserve it’s history. BY MAGGIE QUINLAN
1967 1968 2015 2016
Austin ISD sells the school for $5,201 to O.A. Willhoite. Montopolis Church of Christ leases the property.
Property sold to KEEP Investment Group. The Historic Landmark Commission deems the site historically signi cant.
Austin—were African American sharecroppers, McGhee said. That same year, the state of Texas passed its rst Jim Crow lawmandating racial segregation on trains, according to a timeline created by the Texas State Library. Forty-three years after its establishment, the school moved to the location on Montopolis Drive. McKnight said the city will be absorbing input fromMontopolis residents while planning renova- tion of the school. She expects that the building will be fully accessible inside and out to the public. The city of Austin initiated acquisition of the building in 2017 with intentions to turn it into a museum, McKnight said. Negotiations with a private landowner fell through. In 2019, the parks and recreation department acquired the building. McKnight said the planning process should begin this year. Once the department has formulated its renovation plan, staff will work to ind funding for the project. McGhee said he knows several Montopolis resi- dents who attended the school under Jim Crow law. “America, and especially Texas, has this unfor- tunate habit of sweeping things under the rug,” McGhee said. “The value of preservation is that you actually get to see it and experience it.”
school into museum. 2017
City of Austin identi es goal to turn
school for renovation. 2019
Parks and Recreation Department acquires
There were once roughly 40 all-Black schools in Austin—they were one-room schoolhouses, with one teacher educating students from age 4 to young adults, said Fred McGhee, an archaeologist, Monto- polis resident and president of the neighborhood’s community development corporation. “In order for you to move forward you need to know where you’ve been. And that’s a fundamental principle; it’s not just a proverb,” McGhee said. “The United States … does preserve things it deems historic. By and large, it’s not the history of working class people or people of color.” A historical restoration process is beginning later in 2022, said KimMcKnight, programmanager of historic preservation for Austin’s Parks and Recre- ation Department. When the renovation is complete, the schoolhouse will serve as a museum. The Montopolis Negro School was established in 1891 on Bastrop Highway when a majority of the Montopolis community—not yet annexed by
begins. 2022
The planning process for renovation
SOURCES: AUSTIN ISD ARCHIVE, CITY OF AUSTIN, MONTOPOLIS COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORP., TEXAS STATE LIBRARY COMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER
Montopolis Negro School 500 Montopolis Drive, Austin
ROY G. GUERRERO METROPOLITAN PARK
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CENTRAL AUSTIN EDITION • FEBRUARY 2022
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