Dyess Elementary School

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker at Dyess Elementary School has to say — and it's a story worth slowing down for. January 21, 1963. Thirty-eight children walked into Dyess Elementary School in Abilene, Texas.

And with that, something that should have happened years before finally, finally happened. Let's back up, because the road to that morning was long and full of roadblocks — some of them built deliberately. In 1954, the United States Supreme Court ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional.

That's the law of the land, settled and clear. But Texas had other ideas. The state passed House Bill 65, which prohibited the desegregation of schools without a local referendum.

In other words, the people who'd built the segregated system got to vote on whether to dismantle it. You can imagine how that tended to go. Now, the African American military families living on Dyess Air Force Base were caught right in the middle of this.

Their children were required to attend Woodson School — the segregated school — which sat further from the base than Dyess Elementary did. Right there, closer, was a school their kids couldn't attend. That's not an accident.

That's a system doing exactly what it was designed to do. Something had to give. And in December of 1962, it did.

Texas Attorney General Will Wilson ruled that House Bill 65 was itself unconstitutional. That was one barrier down. And the Department of Defense was applying pressure of its own — threatening to pull funding from Dyess Elementary if it wasn't integrated during the sixty-two, sixty-three school year.

The walls were closing in on a system that never should have stood in the first place. On January 14, 1963, the Abilene Independent School District Board Members voted unanimously — not narrowly, not reluctantly — unanimously — to begin integrating district schools. They chose Dyess Elementary as the first, covering kindergarten through sixth grade.

They approved new attendance zones, giving parents the choice of keeping their children at Woodson or enrolling them at Dyess. One week later, thirty-eight African American students began school at Dyess Elementary. The rest of the AISD schools desegregated kindergarten through sixth grade that fall of 1963, with the other grades following gradually.

Complete integration of Abilene's schools was achieved in 1970. Sixteen years after the Supreme Court's ruling. Sixteen years.

That number deserves to sit in the air for a moment before we move on down the road.

What the marker says

On January 21, 1963, Dyess Elementary was the first school in the Abilene Independent School District to integrate all students. African American military families living on Dyess Air Force Base were previously forced to send their children to the segregated Woodson School, which was located further from the base than Dyess Elementary. Although the U.S. Supreme court ruled in 1954 that school segregation was unconstitutional, the State of Texas passed House Bill 65 that prohibited the desegregation of schools without a local referendum. However, in December 1962, Texas Attorney General Will Wilson ruled that HB65 was unconstitutional. The Department of Defense also threatened to pull funding from Dyess Elementary if it was not integrated during the ’62-’63 school year. Abilene Independent School District Board Members voted unanimously on January 14, 1963, to begin the integration of district schools. Dyess was chosen as the first school to integrate kindergarten through sixth grade. The board quickly approved new attendance zones to allow parents to choose between keeping their children at Woodson, or integrating them at Dyess. The following week, on January 21, 38 African American students began school at Dyess Elementary. The remaining AISD schools desegregated kindergarten through sixth grade in the fall of 1963, with the other grades integrating gradually. Complete integration of Abilene schools was achieved in 1970, 16 years after the U.S. Supreme court’s initial ruling.