In the second half of the 20th century, Mexican and Mexican-American children came in Marfa, Texaswere educated in an adobe-style building with classrooms described by former students as resembling barracks.
They were given second-hand schoolbooks and beaten for speaking Spanish instead of English in a school attended by Latin American students. separated from the Anglo-Saxons according to law and practice, just as whites and blacks were separated in the South. But the Blackwell School principal also created an interscholastic league specifically for “Mexican schools,” and alumni remembered their friends, shared laughs and friendly teachers as they gathered in Marfa on Saturday, early in Hispanic Heritage Monthto celebrate the Blackwell School becoming the newest national park.
During a formal ribbon-cutting ceremony for the newest national site dedicated to modern Latin American history, former Blackwell students, neighbors, friends and politicians toured the original school building and a smaller building that served as a band hall. Inside, photographs, memorabilia and informational panels with quotes from former students and teachers reveal the imprint of a school that once served as an example of the racially divided educational system that defined de facto segregation in the country from 1889 to 1965.
During the ceremony, a mariachi band played at the exact moment the ribbon was cut. The 100 attendees also enjoyed a ballet folklórico performance and traditional frontier music from the Chihuahuan Desert, played by the band Primo y Beebe. Alumni also had the chance to write on a whiteboard what the Blackwell School meant to them.
“I’m glad it wasn’t torn down,” said Betty Nuñez Aguirre, a former alumnus and director of the Blackwell School Alliance. “It will show the next generation that it wasn’t always easy for their parents or grandparents to get an education.”
Many alumni see Blackwell — originally built in 1909 and built 11 years after the court’s landmark 1954 decision Brown v. Board of Education — as more than a symbol of America’s history of racial inequality. It’s a symbol of Latinos triumphing over adversity.
In 2006, Joe Cabezuela, 80, was at a local restaurant celebrating the reunion of the Blackwell class of 1960 when he heard that the Marfa Independent School District was going to demolish the Blackwell school. Cabezuela said he knew immediately that something had to be done to stop the demolition, so he went straight to the principal’s office.
“That’s not going to happen,” Cabezuela told the superintendent. “It’s part of the Hispanic heritage, a history that we have to save.”
The superintendent then invited Cabezuela, founder and former president of the Blackwell School Alliance, to give a presentation to the school board on why the building should be saved. Cabezuela and other alumni eventually joined forces with a local artist and collaborated on a sketch of what the saved school should look like.
Shortly thereafter, the Marfa school board agreed to a 100-year lease on the building for $1 with the Blackwell School Alliance, on the condition that the building would be demolished if it was not preserved for more than 25 years.
Every year small fundraising efforts were started to pay the electricity bill, keep the water on and repair the damage.
The school officially became part of the national parks system in July, authorized by the Blackwell School National Historic Site Act, which President Biden signed into law in October 2022.
“This site is a powerful reminder of our nation’s diverse and often complex journey toward equality and justice. By honoring the legacy of Blackwell School, we recognize the resilience and contributions of the Latino community throughout our shared history,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in July, when the site was formally established.
Of the 429 national parks, only two tell modern Latin American history before Blackwell: the Cesar Chavez National Monument in California and the Chamizal National Memorial in El Paso.
Tony Cano, a member of the Blackwell School Alliance, attended Blackwell School for three years beginning in the fall of 1952. He recalls that during that time, teachers would have students write Spanish words on paper, place the papers in mini-coffins made of hats or cigar boxes, and bury “Mr. Spanish” in a symbolic funeral in front of the school flagpole.
“They tried to make us speak only English on campus and in class,” Cano said. “A lot of kids rebelled. If you rebelled once, they would hit you three times with the paddle.”
Cano said he remembers a girl who got beaten up and went home with bruises and didn’t come back to school for three days. Cano said that now that he’s older, he realizes that no matter what they did to them then, “they can’t take my heritage away from me.”
From 1920 to 1947, principal Jesse Blackwell, who is Anglo, transformed the school by creating an interscholastic league specifically for “Mexican schools,” where children from the region could compete against each other, according to historian Cristobal Lopez. For his contributions, the school, first known as the Ward of Mexican School, was renamed after Blackwell when he retired.
“He took the basic principles and elevated them to make sure that the students, even though they were in a segregated school building, were getting the proper education that they needed,” said Lopez, who serves as Texas’ representative for the National Parks Conservation Association.
“Mexican schools, and when you look at segregated education, there are a number of things that stand out — the physical abuse, the emotional abuse — that did happen at Blackwell,” Lopez said. “But the alumni really came together and changed the narrative and really made it a story of resilience, perseverance and success.”
Despite the negative associations with “Mexican schools” that discourage the Spanish language, alumni have retained memories of teachers, their friends, small gestures and laughter.
“I think at Blackwell they just cared about us very much,” Cano said, “even though some of us were difficult to get along with.”
In fifth grade, Cabezuela recalled, he and his classmates were getting new playground equipment when then-Principal Henry Ward showed up with a gym bag full of brand-new baseball bats. Cabezuela said it was one of his fondest memories of being in school.
Cabezuela said he is happy and proud that the school has been preserved, but the best thing about the Blackwell School being designated a national park is that people who walk through it run into their grandparents and learn about their history.
Now, he said, “our grandchildren, great-grandchildren will go through that building. Even when I’m gone, they’ll go through there and they’ll probably see something about me and they’ll say, look at Grandpa.”
___
The Associated Press receives funding from the Sony Global Social Justice Fund to expand certain coverage areas. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for collaboration with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas on AP.org.