During the 1950s and 1960s, Rev. Marvin C. Griffin strove to bring the Christian gospel to bear upon the civil rights struggle in Waco. As minister of New Hope Baptist Church from 1951 to 1969, Reverend Griffin preached a message of spiritual vitality and social action, advocating for racial equality during a period of heightened tensions among Waco’s white, black, and Hispanic communities. Griffin’s unswerving emphasis on racial justice and reconciliation established him as a respected leader throughout Central Texas.

The future minister was born in Wichita, Kansas, in 1923 and, after several years in Oklahoma, spent his later childhood and adolescence in Dallas, Texas. Like many African American families in their community, the Griffin family suffered the effects of race-based inequality. The scarcity of Depression-era jobs for black men meant that Griffin’s mother supported the family on wages from her job as housekeeper in a white home. The young Griffin, however, felt called to become a preacher and exhibited academic promise at an early age.

After high school, Griffin entered Bishop College—at that time the only Texas institution offering a degree in religion to African American students. There he met Lois King, whom he married in 1944 and with whom he would serve churches and communities throughout Texas for over six decades. After graduating from Bishop in 1943, Griffin earned a bachelor of divinity in theology from the famed Oberlin College in Ohio. Oberlin’s emphasis on the social implications of the Christian message shaped Griffin’s approach to civil rights in the years to come. Griffin graduated from Oberlin in 1947 and soon took a position as director of city missions for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Home Mission Board in Dallas, Texas. There, the young graduate worked with people in need from white and black neighborhoods alike. In this way, Griffin’s diverse childhood, educational, and professional experiences allowed him to cultivate relationships across racial and economic lines.

In 1951, Waco’s New Hope Baptist Church invited Griffin to fill in as interim pastor when its own minister, Dr. Joseph Newton Jenkins, fell ill. This temporary position became permanent when Jenkins passed away, and the twenty-seven-year-old seminary graduate found himself the pastor of one of Waco’s oldest and most prominent African American churches. The young minister took to the position quickly, however, pioneering a radio ministry and citywide transportation system to the church on Sunday. All the while, Griffin devoted himself to theological study; in 1955 he became the first African American to receive a master of religious education from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Griffin also brought a renewed emphasis on the social resonances of the Christian gospel, preaching the importance of advocating for justice in the wake of pervasive racial discrimination. In Waco, the new pastor entered an environment in which white hostility was prevalent and in which local blacks were hesitant to confront racial divides for fear that their jobs, social standing, and physical safety might be jeopardized.

Their fears were not unfounded. When initial efforts to integrate Waco schools following the Brown v. Board of Education decision were stymied by public backlash, it appeared that the desegregation project had reached a standstill. White leaders took no initiative toward implementing the federal ruling, and area blacks balked at taking any serious form of action. For the remainder of the decade, little progress was made in the dismantling of legalized segregation.

Thanks to leaders such as Marvin Griffin, the tide began to turn during the 1960s, bringing about an integration that proved far more peaceful—albeit far more gradual—than many cities in the South. As the nationwide struggle for civil rights grew more visible and more tumultuous, Waco minorities became increasingly vocal in their calls for desegregation and equal access to employment. Leading white Chamber of Commerce members—dubbed “The Committee of Fifty”—were anxious to avoid the protests, sit-ins, and violence plaguing much of the South. When the committee expressed the desire to cooperate with Waco’s black community leaders in desegregating the city at long last, Marvin Griffin set to work forming a council comprised of seven prominent African American men and women. With Griffin as its chairman, the council sought input from all corners of Waco’s black population to formulate a list of the most pressing racial issues to be remedied. These included public accommodations, the use of recreational facilities, access to jobs, and representation on boards and commissions.

The Committee of Fifty proved open to cooperation. It and Griffin’s council were careful, however, to keep their deliberations secret, lest they arouse anger from the white community. Thus, in 1961, they privately crafted a plan for the gradual and quiet desegregation of Waco businesses, cooperating with journalists to ensure that the press would refrain from reporting on the committee’s existence and the instances of desegregation that followed. Facility by facility, the group worked with business owners and the designated African American citizens—often Griffin and the members of his council—who would patronize each establishment. By means of enforcement, several members of the committee threatened to fire employees who did not carry out the new policy of desegregation. By 1963, popular Waco eating establishments, hospitals, and department stores had desegregated in this manner. Additionally, Baylor president Abner McCall—a member of the Committee of Fifty—began to take steps in the desegregation of Baylor University, which was finally desegregated in 1964.

Public desegregation, however, was only the first step in a long and arduous road toward a more racially equitable society. Accordingly, Griffin remained unwavering in his advocacy for Waco’s black community even after this initial wave of desegregation. The pastor worked to secure job opportunities for Waco’s African American citizens, and he also continued to fight for the desegregation of the Waco Independent School District, which would ultimately desegregate by federal court order in the early 1970s. Griffin also continued to facilitate racial reconciliation in local churches as well, exchanging pulpits with white preachers such as Rhea Gray and holding interracial book clubs in homes to facilitate productive dialogue on issues of race. In the political sphere, Griffin worked to expand black voter registration and galvanized his congregation and others into a politically active community.

In 1969, Griffin accepted an offer to become pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Austin, Texas—a position in which he served until his retirement on July 31, 2011. Here the twin goals of Christian faithfulness and social action remained paramount in Griffin’s ministry. In 1998, the pastor spearheaded the creation of the East Austin Economic Development Corporation, which offered crucial services to underprivileged populations. The spiritual and social leader continued to advance in learning and education even in latter decades of his career; in 1990, Griffin received his doctor of ministry from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Throughout his long and storied life, Griffin never wavered in his insistence that the Christian message was inseparable from the issue of racial justice and community involvement, and he continued to encourage Christian faithfulness and social activism among his congregants at Ebenezer.

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When initial efforts to racially integrate the Waco Independent School District (WISD) proved insufficient in bringing about educational equality, community members like Pete D. Arvizu took to the courts in protest. The resulting legal battle, Arvizu v. WISD, stood as part of a series of court decisions in the early 1970s that, among other measures, mandated bilingual education as a form of relief from the damages of illegal segregation. In doing so it helped define what that integration process would entail for minority students of African and Hispanic descent.

Following the creation of America’s first public school system in 1837, racial segregation dominated the nation’s educational landscape. Even after the abolition of slavery, Supreme Court decisions such as Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) effectively sanctioned segregated education by ruling that “separate but equal” schools were an acceptable and beneficial form of racial division. As a result, African American students were unable to benefit from America’s developing public school system. Furthermore, while Hispanic students were largely classified as white for the purposes of segregation, many faced discriminatory treatment and did not have access to resources, such as English language instruction, to aid in their academic growth.

After civil rights activists fought for more than a half century to dismantle legislated segregation, the Supreme Court struck down the “separate but equal” doctrine in 1954 with the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, declaring race-based school segregation unconstitutional. Despite the enormity of this judicial victory, many school districts resisted the court order to take steps toward school integration. Waco was one such community.

While desegregation efforts in Waco officially began in 1963, the district was slow to change. By the fall of 1968, the majority of schools operated under de facto segregation, with the racial makeup of students and staff falling dismally below federal standards. It was not until December of 1970 that the school board of the Waco Independent School District drafted a comprehensive integration plan. Similar to many integration plans across the nation, the district relied upon busing to achieve appropriate racial representation in each school. Many in Waco’s black and Mexican American communities, however, found the new busing patterns problematic as students were transported to schools far from their homes, often being forced to leave before daylight and arrive home late into the afternoon.

The new integration plan left several racially identifiable schools, which, parents argued, kept segregation alive in the education system. The plan also required a disproportionately large number of minority students to be bused to new schools, while most white students remained in their neighborhood schools. While federal courts had declared that Mexican American students were minorities for the purposes of desegregation, districts often used Hispanic students to reach desegregation quotas without integrating Anglo students as well. However, when Mexican American students were integrated into majority-Anglo schools, they were often taken away from the few bilingual learning resources that did exist.

Pete Arvizu, whose residence is shown on the map below, and other concerned parents began to file lawsuits against the Waco Independent School District in late summer 1971. In February of 1972, US District Judge Jack Roberts combined two major lawsuits—one primarily made up of Mexican American plaintiffs and the other primarily composed of African American plaintiffs—given the similarity of the two cases. The plaintiffs demanded that the school system appropriately distribute students, hire more minority teachers, and abolish disparate school facilities. After over a year of examination and public hearings, Roberts ruled in 1973 that “vestiges of segregation” did indeed still exist in WISD. The court found that of the 35 district schools, 15 were racially identifiable, with over 50 percent minority students. Minority representation among faculty and staff also fell short of standards. Of the 6,000 students who were to be bused, more than 5,000 of them were black.

Just as such segregation limited the potential of African Americans to succeed, the court found that Mexican American students, as a minority group had also suffered discrimination and disadvantage, were “entitled to proper implementation of steps necessary to assure them the equal protection of the laws and an equal educational opportunity.” Given that the absence of bilingual education stymied the future potential of English language learners, the court ordered that Mexican American students be provided with a special curriculum and bilingual educational programs.

The district largely complied with Judge Roberts’ directives, but some Wacoans were unhappy with the new realities of school integration. Enrollment in the school system decreased by around two-thousand, or more than 10 percent, between the 1972-73 and 1973-74 school years. In Waco and across the nation, the mass exodus of white families out of cities and into suburbs reduced the effectiveness of integration approaches such as busing. Many Waco-area families flocked to what would become the Midway Independent School District. In addition, many white families moved their children to private or parochial schools following the desegregation of public schools.

White and black families alike continued to express anger at being forced to send their children to schools in distant neighborhoods when other schools stood close by. They claimed that busing was ineffective, disorganized, and undermined neighborhood and community spirit. After the 1980s, education policy began to shift away from busing, and some school districts began to adopt new tactics to promote diversity and equal educational opportunity, such as the opening of magnet schools. The realities of public school life continued to shift in the decades following Waco’s initial attempts at integration. Arvizu v. WISD and other integration efforts ushered in a new era in American public education and bore results that are still visible to this day.

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An African American-owned hotel during the period of segregation and Jim Crow laws, the College View Court-Hotel provided respite for black travelers on the road.

The College View Court-Hotel offered guests modern comfort with its thirty-five air-conditioned rooms and tiled bathrooms. Owned by Dr. J. W. Yancy II, president of Paul Quinn College from 1939 to 1942, the hotel operated throughout the 1950s and continued well into the late 1970s during a time of dramatic expansion in highway travel. Automobile ownership boomed in the post-World War II period. Advances in technology made cars increasingly reliable for long distance travel as well as more affordable to larger portions of society, including the emerging black middle class.

African Americans saw the mobility and freedom that highway travel offered as especially attractive. Despite the opportunities opened up by new technology and expanded infrastructure, travel still required extensive planning since many businesses refused to serve non-white citizens. The emergence of motels such as the College View Court-Hotel in the mid-twentieth century provided some relief. The College View offered convenient and affordable lodging to African Americans on the road. The amenities at motor lodges such as this one—such as the way rooms opened into the parking lot, or the offering of separate cabins for each family—made travel more accessible.

The Negro Motorist Green Book served as a vital guidebook for African American travelers. The College View Court-Hotel first appeared in the Green Book publication in 1951 and continued to appear in the updated edition throughout the 1950s and 1960s. It was The Green Book’s mission to “give the Negro traveler information that will keep him from running into difficulties, embarrassments and to make his trips more enjoyable,” in spite of harsh Jim Crow laws. It was an essential tool for the black traveler facing strict segregation.

The College View Court-Hotel stood as a symbol of the black middle class in Waco, serving African Americans who embraced travel throughout the country in spite of its difficulties. Yancy owned the hotel until it eventually closed and was razed in the 1970s. It is likely that decreased business following integration contributed to the motel’s closure. Today, visitors can still see the center steps and concrete landscape walls of the hotel at the business’s former address, 1129 Elm Avenue in Waco.

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For many years, Sanger Avenue Elementary School stood as the most familiar landmark of the Sanger Heights neighborhood. Located in the “Silk Stocking District,” Sanger Avenue Elementary acquired a reputation as one of the premier educational institutions in the city. 

A 1903 bond election resulted in the construction of three nearly identical schools. Sanger Avenue School, designed by renowned Waco architect Milton W. Scott, long outlasted its counterparts Bell’s Hill and Brook Avenue Elementary Schools. The two-storied building featured unique architecture and elaborate design, including ornate arches, a rotunda, an upstairs auditorium, and a high roof crowned by a cupola. The building’s heavily Romanesque style included arched windows and doors framed by limestone. Prominently featured turrets stood at the front of the original school building but were removed in a 1930 renovation.

Sanger Avenue School opened in 1904 with John H. Richardson as its first principal. Former students and teachers generally agree that the most influential figure in the history of Sanger Avenue was likely Nina Glass, the school’s second principal. Glass encouraged parents and students to take an active role in education, establishing a mimeographed newsletter for parents called the Ginger Jar and inviting students to save coupons to buy pictures for the school. She published a nationally used arithmetic textbook and frequently attended educational conferences. Well liked by both staff and students, Glass was often seen at the school’s annual May Fete festival, brightly garbed and leading students in a parade around the Maypole.

Glass’s enthusiasm reflected the general atmosphere at Sanger Avenue Elementary. Former students fondly remember dedicated teachers and classrooms ideally suited for learning. Large windows poured light into classrooms where each student’s cast-iron and wooden desk held an inkwell. A spacious and well-stocked library, established after Glass attended a Chicago educators’ conference, invited students to study and read.

The years following Glass’s retirement from Sanger Avenue brought great changes for the small elementary school. By the 1960s, over seven hundred students attended the school, and music classes and a choir were established. Yet the Waco Independent School District (WISD) announced plans for the school’s closure as a part of a busing plan to meet a federal desegregation order. By the 1970s, African American students made up approximately half of the school’s population. Despite the efforts of many to keep the school open, classes ceased at Sanger Avenue in 1974.

Although a portion of the school briefly housed a Head Start program, much of the building soon suffered from years of disuse. Disappointed at seeing such an important piece of Waco’s history sit vacant, Waco attorneys LaNelle and John McNamara purchased the school for $80,000 from WISD. The couple renovated the building, installing a new roof, boarding up broken windows, and removing asbestos. Yet despite their hopes of repurposing the building, perhaps as a charter school, the plans never came through. Another blow was dealt to the historic building when arsonists set fire to it in 2008.

The city of Waco deemed the building unsafe, and in 2010 bulldozers tore the remnants of the structure down, leaving only the entrance archway standing. In 2013, the Waco City Council approved the nonprofit Waco Community Development Corporation’s proposal to build twenty-five homes and the Nina B. Glass Park, which will incorporate the arch, at the site of the former school. This adaptive reuse ensures that the legacy of the school, which stood for over a century as a hallmark of Waco education and distinctive architecture, lives on. 

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Paul Quinn College is the oldest historically black college in Texas. Though it is no longer located in Waco, it remains an important part of the city’s history as the “Athens on the Brazos.”

In 1872 the African Methodist Episcopalian Church founded the Connectional School for the Education of Negro Youth in Austin as a means to provide education to former slaves. Five years later, the campus moved to Waco, where it occupied a small building located at Eighth Street and Mary Avenue until an increase in funding allowed the school to relocate to a new facility on Elm Avenue. In 1881, officials renamed the school for Bishop William Paul Quinn, a Methodist missionary.

Paul Quinn acted as an academic alternative for black students excluded from other institutions of higher education in the pre-Civil Rights era. Early on the college focused primarily on vocational training although it did offer a few courses in theology, English, Latin, music, and math. In the mid-1960s, options for many college-bound students expanded when two new schools joined the higher education landscape in Waco, McLennan Community College and Texas State Technical College. For black students, Paul Quinn remained the only option, and it was a largely unsatisfactory one. Its academic standards were not competitive with the other schools, its facilities were sub-par, and it was unable to receive sufficient funding to improve either situation. When Baylor, MCC, and TSTC racially integrated, Paul Quinn’s appeal dropped so far that the school was in danger of closing permanently.

In the mid-1960s, the Paul Quinn administration appointed a new dean named William Milton Collins, in the hope that he would be able to revitalize the college. Dean Collins did not disappoint. He established a new education department and introduced fine arts classes. He also began an accreditation process that would help Paul Quinn’s academic program improve.

The period between the late 1960s and the early 1970s was one of dramatic change at Paul Quinn. Enrollment greatly increased and administrators oversaw the construction of two new residence halls and a library by 1968. The college launched major development initiatives to help fund student scholarships and provide for campus expansion, but were also intended to increase community involvement and support.

In the late 1980s, African American businessman Comer S. Cottrell presented Paul Quinn with the opportunity to take over the property of the vacated Bishop College in Dallas. With the hopes of revitalizing campus life and opening up its programs to a larger urban market, Paul Quinn seized the opportunity to move north. In September of 1990, the school transferred all operations to the former Bishop campus with the assistance of several corporate sponsors. Paul Quinn College is still in existence in Dallas.

The historic Paul Quinn College campus in Waco fell into temporary disuse after the school’s relocation, but has since entered a period of renewal. Many of the original buildings are now being utilized by Rapoport Academy, continuing the goal of educating future generations.  

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In 1875, Professor Alexander James Moore of Paul Quinn College, concerned at the lack of quality education for African American children in Waco, began teaching small groups of young children out of his home. Though Reconstruction Legislature of 1870 eliminated segregation in schools throughout Texas, these laws were appealed by 1873, and most cities like Waco were left without provisions for African American education. Over time, Moore’s classes grew larger and larger, and it became clear that the school, now called the First District Negro School, needed to find some sort of official facility. In 1881, the classes moved to a small four-room frame building which had originally been a hospital at the corner of Clay Avenue and River Street. These classes became known as the Second District Negro School. In addition to being the first teacher, A. J. Moore served as the school’s first principal from 1881 to 1905. The inaugural graduating class in 1886 contained only five students. In the school’s almost one-hundred years of serving Waco’s children, more than 4,000 students graduated, many continuing on to successful careers.

School officials chose a new location for the school after the main building burned down in 1921. They completed construction on a brick building at 600 South First Street in 1923. This schoolhouse contained 35 classrooms, allowing the school to expand its education of Waco youth. At this time the school obtained the name A. J. Moore High, becoming the only school in the Waco system named for a person. The Waco Tribune-Herald noted that the community chose the name intentionally to honor the selfless legacy of Professor A. J. Moore.

From 1923 to 1952, the school housed kindergarten students through the twelfth grade. From 1952 until the school’s closure in 1971, it provided education for students in the seventh through twelfth grades only. The A. J. Moore High School Handbook, published in 1951, exhorts its students to take responsibility for their own futures, as well as for that of their community. It declares the school’s hopes to offer students a well-rounded education, providing them not only with knowledge, but also the means for achieving success in all areas of life. The handbook calls students to remain loyal to the principles of democracy, encouraging respect for the rights of all citizens.

Space increasingly became an issue as the school continued to grow. Discussions concerning the school’s dilemma noted in particular the poor location of the school, considering the noise coming from the train which ran through the school yard. The overcrowded classrooms only added to the school’s plight. Ultimately, the school closed in 1971, as a result of desegregation and urban renewal projects in Waco.

In 1997, A. J. Moore Academy was reborn in Waco as a magnet school. Proponents of this school hoped to carry on the traditions begun by Professor Moore in the nineteenth century, encouraging students to remain united. The charter school emphasized areas such as business, engineering, entrepreneurship, and technology in order to help students succeed in secondary education and the workplace. In order to combat budget shortfalls, the school board elected to consolidate A. J. Moore Academy with University High in 2012.

A. J. Moore High School was the first and arguably most successful effort for the provision of systematic and quality education for children of all races in Waco. Until Moore took it upon himself to begin teaching young children, Waco did not have any schools dedicated to the education of African American children. Today, the school remains an important hallmark of the Waco community, providing quality education for students of all races.  

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