Book collects memories of Wichita Falls’ Booker T. Washington School

A book available through the Wichita County Archives brings together memories of Wichita Falls’ Booker T. Washington School and accounts of its graduates’ accomplishments, according to the Wichita County Historical Commission. The commission lists Brenda Jarrett as compiler of Remembrance, Booker T. Washington School, a collection that also includes photographs.

The commission credits Becky Trammell and Elizabeth B. Hawley with editing the book. Its listing describes a record of the school and its alumni, preserving recollections alongside accounts of what graduates achieved.

Jarrett’s work in Wichita Falls’ Eastside community includes an effort to organize local businesses. The Wichita Falls Black Chamber of Commerce’s organizational history identifies her as one of four people who tried to form the Eastside Chamber of Commerce in 1995.

Her earlier contributions to preserving the neighborhood’s history included photographs and school football footage, according to the Wichita County Archives’ May 2022 report. The report says Jarrett supplied films of Booker T. Washington’s team playing Fort Worth and Breckenridge in 1967. According to that account, Texas Tech personnel offered to restore, digitize and preserve the films at no cost, and Jarrett agreed to have her collection processed.

The school served as a center of neighborhood activity, according to the historical marker text published by the Wichita County Historical Commission. The marker traces its location to land that former Mayor Jim Marlow sold for a Black business and social center. The marker says residents selected the site for the school and businesses developed around it.

During A. E. Holland’s tenure as principal, the school secured Class A accreditation and added facilities that included a cafeteria and a lighted football field, according to the marker. Its account records the high school’s relocation to Harding Street, followed by district integration and demolition of the former high-school building. The 2005 marker identifies the surviving cafeteria as an alumni center.

Gainesville’s separate Booker T. Washington School is commemorated at 701 Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, according to the Texas Historical Commission’s marker record. That record begins with Island Sparks teaching Black children in 1880. It says the city later built a school initially known as Gainesville Colored School, which adopted Washington’s name before 1927. The marker records that desegregation in 1965–66 ended the school’s operation as a Black institution.

The Wichita County Historical Commission’s listing prices the book at about $40, with postage and handling charged separately. According to the listing, proceeds go to Friends of Lita, an organization formed to raise money for the archivist’s needs.