I.M. Terrell High School

I.M Terrell High School was a secondary school located in Fort Worth, Texas. The school opened in 1882 as the city's first black school, during the era of formal racial segregation in the United States. Though the high school closed in 1973, the building reopened as an elementary school in 1998. After undergoing extensive remodeling and expansion, it is now the home of the I.M. Terrell Academy for STEM and VPA. The school building lies within the Butler Place Historic District. History In 1882, Isaiah Milligan Terrell (1859–1931) became the head of East Ninth Street Colored School, the first free public school for African Americans in Fort Worth. Terrell became Principal and Superintendent of Colored Schools in 1890. In 1906, the school moved to a location at East Twelfth and Steadman Streets, and was renamed North Side Colored School No. 11. A new school building opened in 1910, with Terrell as principal. In 1915, Terrell left the school to become an administrator at Prairie View State Normal and Industrial College (now Prairie View A&M University). The school was renamed I.M Terrell High School in 1921, in honor of the former principal. Due to lack of funding, during its early years, the school lacked a gymnasium, cafeteria, and library. The building also had a limited number of rooms for teaching and the textbooks were handed down from nearby white schools. Eventually, the school's first library would be started by Lillian B. Jones Horace, a teacher and librarian who encouraged parents and students to donate books. In 1938, the school moved to an existing structure (a former white elementary school) at 1411 East Eighteenth Street in the Baptist Hill neighborhood. The building was expanded as part of a Works Progress Administration project. The school's former location became an elementary and junior high school. In 1940, the Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools for Negroes (ACSSN) selected I.M. Terrell High School to participate as an experimental site in the Secondary School Study (also known as the Black High School Study). The study, funded by the General Education Board, sought to include African American teachers in the development of progressive education. According to the study, by the 1940s the school had 26 faculty members serving 900 students in grades 9 through 11.