DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker for Riverside School has to say — and friend, it says plenty. Now, Gonzales, Texas has seen its share of history, hard history, and this piece of it starts in 1914. That's when a school opened on Water Street — they called it the Water Street Mexican School — and from day one, it carried a weight that no building made of brick ought to have to carry.
Because this was the only facility available for Mexican American students in the entire town of Gonzales. Not one of several. The only one.
The schoolhouse itself was one story, built of brick, and it started out housing six grades under that one roof. Now, six grades is a lot to pack in, but the enrollment kept growin', and when a community keeps showin' up to learn, you figure out a way to make more room. The school added on.
New facilities came to that campus over time. And here's where the story gets a little particular — two of those additions didn't exactly start life as school buildings. One was a surplus Army building pulled from Camp Swift.
The other was the former Stieren School. Both of them were moved — physically picked up and relocated — right there to the Riverside campus. By this point the school had shed its original name and was going by Riverside School.
Then comes 1948, and the story takes another turn. Hispanic students were no longer sent to Riverside. Instead, the school became the designated facility for African American students in Gonzales.
One building, one community after another, all of them steered there not by choice but by the policy of the day. That went on until 1965. From 1914 to 1965 — more than half a century — that one brick schoolhouse on Water Street stood as the place Gonzales told two communities of children: this is as far as you go.
The building absorbed all of it. The lessons, the names carved into desks, the whole complicated, painful, human weight of what segregation does to a town. The marker calls it a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, designated in 2018.
I'd call it a witness. Because Riverside School is still standing, and it still knows exactly what it saw.
What the marker says
After opening in 1914, the Water Street Mexican School, later named Riverside School, was the only facility available for Mexican American students in Gonzales. The one-story brick schoolhouse originally housed six grades, and there were additions to the building and new facilities on the campus as enrollment grew. This included a surplus Army building from Camp Swift and the former Stieren School both being moved here. The Riverside School was used for Hispanic students until 1948 and then for African American students until 1965. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2018