Black Education in Orange County

Duane's take

The official marker for Black Education in Orange County, and here's how I tell it. Long before there were school buildings with names on them, before there were commissioners drawing lines on maps, the children of Orange County's African American families were already learning. As early as the 1870s, they gathered in private homes and churches, because that's where the education was.

Nobody waited for permission. They just made a way. Then came 1887, and the Orange County commissioners got around to establishing 17 school districts.

One of those was Duncan Woods No. 3, out in the Duncan Woods community of southwestern Orange County. By the time it was officially on the books, that school had probably already been running for several years. A teacher named Thomas F.

Pollard was among the early ones working there. The marker doesn't dress that up, and neither will I. Just a man, showing up, teaching children.

Over in the city of Orange itself, students were moving around, following the education wherever it could find a roof. In the 1880s, they attended at Mount Zion Baptist, then at Salem Methodist Episcopal Colored Church. Under the leadership of teacher A.J.

Criner, the school moved again, this time into United Brotherhood Friendship Hall. Each move was a step, not a setback. Then came S.R.

Pickney. He served as principal for 13 years, and during his tenure the school made another move, this one into a two-story frame structure. That building became known as the Orange Colored School.

And that name held, for a while. In 1930, the school was renamed in honor of educator and Tuskegee Institute President Russa Moton. Sixteen years later, in 1946, it was renamed again, this time for a longtime Orange teacher and principal named Emma Henderson Wallace.

Two names honoring two legacies, layered into the same institution. The school that carried those names, Moton Elementary and High School, eventually moved into a three-story brick structure. It was known for its beautiful campus.

It won acclaim for its sports programs and its band programs. Hundreds of African American students moved through that district, and the district kept building new facilities, kept reaching forward, right up until integration in 1966. In those final years before integration, the district utilized Franklin Elementary, built in 1958, and North Junior High School, opened in August 1964, though only for a short while.

Most of the former African American campuses were eventually phased out of use as the district, which became the West Orange Cove Independent School District, changed around them. But not everything was let go. The North Junior High campus was converted into a learning center, kept alive, kept useful.

Decades of private homes, and churches, and rented halls, and frame buildings, and eventually brick ones, all of it in service of the same stubborn idea: that these children deserved to be educated. Orange County's African American community knew that before anyone made it official, and they didn't stop knowing it after.

What the marker says

As early as the 1870s, Orange County's African American children attended school in private homes and churches. The Orange County commissioners established 17 school districts in 1887. Schools included the Duncan Woods No. 3, located in the Duncan Woods community of southwestern Orange County. The school had probably been in operation for several years at that time. Thomas F. Pollard served as an early teacher there. Students within the city of Orange attended school at Mount Zion Baptist and then Salem Methodist Episcopal Colored Church in the 1880s. Under the leadership of teacher A.J. Criner, the school later moved to the United Brotherhood Friendship Hall. S.R. Pickney served as principal for 13 years, and during his tenure the school moved into a two-story frame structure, which became the Orange Colored School. It was renamed in 1930 in honor of educator and Tuskegee Institute President Russa Moton and again in 1946 for longtime Orange teacher and principal Emma Henderson Wallace. Moton Elementary and High School, which later occupied a three-story brick structure, was known for its beautiful campus and won acclaim for its sports and band programs. The district included schools for several hundred African American students and continued to build new facilities up until intergration in 1966. It utilized Franklin Elementary, built in 1958, and North Junior High School, opened in August 1964, only for a short while. Although most of the former African American campuses were phased out of use, the district, which became the West Orange Cove Independent School District, converted the North Junior High campus into a learning center. (1988, 2004)