Site of Marshall-Carver High School

Site of Marshall-Carver High School. . , The first school for African American students in Georgetown was established in the early 20th century. Called “The Colored School,” the institution served grades 1 through 8 and provided the only local educational opportunities for African Americans. The school’s principal, Mr. S.C. Marshall, was an outspoken advocate of higher education. A scholar himself, he persuaded the school board to allow him to provide classes through the high school level. He named the new program “The Georgetown Colored High School,” and the first student enrolled in 1913. A new high school building was erected in 1923 due to increasing enrollment. When Marshall left the school in 1930, it was renamed Marshall School in his honor. The name was changed to George Washington Carver in the 1940s., In 1962, the parents of seventeen Carver students who had been denied admission to Georgetown’s white schools filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court to force integration. The court ordered the Georgetown Independent School District to integrate one grade level per year beginning with the first grade. Partial integration began in the fall of 1964. Convinced that gradual integration would not benefit their children, African American parents appealed the decision to the Fifth Circuit Court which upheld the lower court’s verdict. Proponents of full and immediate integration engaged in a letter-writing campaign to the U.S. Attorney General, the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and the Federal Assistance Program urging another review of the case. In the fall of 1965, the Georgetown school board agreed to a plan to complete integration of the school system by September 1967. The Carver school was permanently closed due to integration.