African American High Schools in North Texas
The community of Pilot Point built a formally organized colored public school in 1900, after the City Council approved the request to start organizing and building a building for the school in 1896. The school served students from 1st through 8th grade, after which students who desired to continue their education would have to go to the Fred Douglass High School in the Quakertown neighborhood of the county seat of Denton. Douglass was the only high school for black students in the county. This remained the case until the Denton school board closed the school with the coming of in integration 1964. The Denton County Superintendent gave yearly reports on the state of schools in the county every October, and these reports included information about the colored schools in the county. Information included in the reports included: the number of teachers, their salaries, their certificate levels, the condition or libraries and schools, and the number of students. Education was important to the African American community – with student enrollment numbers remaining consistent over the years and African American education programs being a cornerstone of the Freedmen’s Bureau’s mission.
Though many communities in the more rural areas of North Texas had primary schools for African American students, the only High Schools were in city centers: Dallas, Fort Worth, Gainesville, and Denton. Within Denton County, African American Students who wished to continue their education would need to attend one of these schools – most often the in the Quakertown neighborhood of Denton, Texas.
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