Dunbar School

Duane's take

The way I hear it, the official marker for Dunbar School in Hays County tells it like this. Now, some stories start with a birth year. This one might start even earlier than that.

Private instruction for black children in San Marcos, the marker says, may have begun as early as 1847. May have. That little hedge carries a whole world of effort and uncertainty inside it.

What we know for certain comes thirty years later: 1877, when the first public school was founded, with fifty pupils walking through the door. Fifty young people, in a town that had given them no public schooling before. That's where this story gets its footing.

The school found a more permanent home in 1918, when it was moved to a seven-and-three-tenths acre site, the very ground this marker stands on. And then the graduates started coming back. That's the part I love.

They went out, continued into higher education, and some of them turned right around and came home to teach. One of those was Ola Lee Coleman, whose career here stretched thirty-six years, the longest of anyone on that faculty. Thirty-six years of San Marcos children passing through her classroom.

In 1961, the school was given a new name: Dunbar, for Paul Laurence Dunbar, born 1872, gone by 1906, noted black author. A short life that left a long enough shadow to name a school after. The facility closed with the completion of school integration in the 1960s, as that chapter wound down.

Then in 1973, Mr. and Mrs. C. D.

Marshall purchased the site, so it could live on as a city park. From a maybe in 1847, to fifty pupils in 1877, to a park in 1973. San Marcos held onto this ground, one way or another, all that time.

What the marker says

Private instruction for black children in San Marcos may have begun as early as 1847, but the first public school was founded in 1877 with 50 pupils. The school was moved to this 7.3 acre site in 1918. Many graduates continued into higher education, and some returned as teachers, including Ola Lee Coleman, whose 36-year career was the longest here. In 1961 the school was renamed for Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1872-1906), noted black author. This facility closed with the completion of school integration in the 1960s. In 1973 Mr. and Mrs. C. D. Marshall purchased the site for use as a city park. (1975)