Rocky Crest School

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Rocky Crest School, out in Dallas County. Now, before there was a Rocky Crest, there was a pistol factory. A Confederate pistol factory, to be exact, and when the war ended, somebody looked at that building and decided it could do something better with itself.

In 1868, Lancaster's very first school for African American children opened right there inside those walls. Whatever that building had been forged for before, it was forged into something else entirely after that. Before long, the school had a name, Lancaster Colored School, and it had a home on Keller Branch, and it had seventy-three students filling its rooms.

Seventy-three children showing up to learn. That's not a small thing. That's a community deciding its children are worth the trouble.

The school kept moving, multiple locations over the years, because that's what a living institution does. It adapts. By 1906, the trustees had worked out a particular arrangement: adults could come in and offer night classes, but if they wanted the lights on, they were paying for the electricity themselves.

Practical minded people, those trustees. Then comes 1927, and Lancaster absorbs the Rawlins School. Now, when a school disappears, sometimes what's left is just a memory.

But here, what was left was brick. And those bricks from Rawlins didn't go to waste, they went into the walls of a brand new Rocky Crest building. There's something to sit with there.

The old school didn't vanish; it got built right into the next one. Rocky Crest ran eight grades and did more than teach them. It hosted community activities, it was a gathering place, a center of gravity for the people around it.

And it had leaders who stayed. Laura B. White, R.

B. White, and J. D.

Hall all served as longtime principals of this school. That kind of continuity doesn't happen by accident. That's dedication, plain and simple.

The school kept growing, kept expanding, right up until Lancaster schools integrated in 1965 and 1966. What stands on that site today is one of the oldest places in the area connected to early minority education. It started in a pistol factory in 1868 and it endured for nearly a century.

Some buildings hold more history than their walls have any right to contain, and Rocky Crest School is one of them.

What the marker says

In 1868, Lancaster’s first school for African American children opened in a former Confederate pistol factory. Soon after, “Lancaster Colored School” on Keller Branch served 73 students. In 1906, trustees allowed adults to offer night classes if they paid for electricity. The school had multiple locations. When Lancaster absorbed Rawlins School in 1927, brick from Rawlins was used for a new building. Laura B. White, R. B. White and J. D. Hall were longtime Principals of Rocky Crest, which taught eight grades and hosted community activities. The school expanded before Lancaster schools integrated in 1965-66. The site remains one of the area’s oldest associated with early minority education. 175 years of Texas Independence * 1836-2011