Fort Worth Stop Six landmark, onetime Sagamore Hill Negro School holds history

In an effort to preserve city history, Fort Worth Report agreed to archive Hollace Weiner’s local history columns beginning in 2025. This column originally ran in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and was updated for the Report.

Fort Worth’s century-old Sagamore Hill Negro School, with its slanted roof and gabled porches, has no historic marker and no sign above the door — yet it merits landmark status. Originally a four-room schoolhouse for Black children learning their ABCs, the building was constructed in 1924 with blueprints and partial funding from a Jewish philanthropist.

It is one of 464 Rosenwald Schools that opened in Texas between 1913 and 1932, in the years of stark Jim Crow disparities. Only 36 of those little school buildings still stand, many as community spaces, according to the Texas Historical Commission.

Fort Worth School Board trustee Quinton “Q” Phillips pledged July 28 to have a sign erected at the building and to ask advocates to apply for a Texas Historical Marker. “It does need to be showcased, preserved and honored,” he said. “There was reason to wait.”

The historic building, the size of a portable classroom, sits on the grounds of the Dunbar Young Men’s Leadership Academy at 5100 Willie St. In the past several years, the 10-acre campus was a construction site. An existing school building doubled in size to 110,000 square feet. Science and engineering labs were added as well as a gymnasium that seats 600 spectators. Construction was completed in November 2023.

The old Sagamore Hill Negro School is on the far east side of the parking lot. Visiting it is a walk-through history lesson, yet it hosts few educational activities. Its doors are usually locked.

“It’s still used, but not to the degree it could be,” according to former Fort Worth City Council member Frank Moss, 79, one of the school’s alumni. He and his four brothers attended the school house in the 1940s and 1950s. He views the landmark as a time capsule that teachers and students should visit on field trips to envision the past.

“Our Rosenwald School grew out of the Black churches,” said Moss, longtime president of the Center for Stop Six Heritage which has an office there. “This building has a proud story to tell.”

Rosenwald Schools grew out of a partnership between Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and Black educator Booker T. Washington, author of “Up From Slavery: An Autobiography.” Their collaboration led to the construction of 4,977 rural schools in 15 states where Black youngsters learned to read, write, add and subtract. An exhibit running until Aug. 17 at the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, “A Better Life for Their Children,” tells this largely forgotten story.

During the Jim Crow era, if Black children went to school, it was in crude shacks with rickety desks, torn textbooks, broken pencils and no chalkboards.

In Fort Worth’s historic Stop Six neighborhood, two churches — Prairie Chapel and Cowan McMillan African Methodist — provided school rooms for Black youngsters.

In 1921, farmer Alonzo Cowan donated land on Willie Street for a future Black school. Three years later, on April 12, 1924, the Sagamore Hill ISD held a controversial election to allocate $5,000 in bond money for a Black schoolhouse. With 55% of the vote, the measure passed. Using blueprints from the Chicago-based Rosenwald Foundation, construction began. Black families pitched in with manual labor. The building opened in the fall of 1924 with R.H. Hines as its principal.

By then, Sagamore Hill schools had been incorporated into the Fort Worth school district. Superintendent Burl Carroll, whom the Ku Klux Klan had endorsed, inspected the premises along with an instructional superintendent from Austin. The latter approved an additional $1,100 from the Rosenwald Fund to finish out the building and furnish classrooms with desks and blackboards.

The Star-Telegram mistakenly reported on Sept. 25, 1924, that the Rosenwald Fund was “established by a wealthy Negro of Chicago,” rather than a Russian Jewish immigrant with a nationwide mail-order catalogue.

The original Sagamore Hill Negro School had four classrooms — three measuring 660 square feet and a fourth with 572 square feet. A small 12-by-14-foot vocational room was focused on agriculture. That tiny space was the FWISD’s only “industrial” room for Blacks, “something no other Negro school here has,” the Star-Telegram reported. White schools had “day trade” classes that included auto mechanics, printing, cabinetry, electrical wiring and machine shops.

“I remember when I went to school here, we had outdoor toilets,” Moss recalled.

Because it lacked electricity, the school was designed with more than two dozen vertical windows that let in natural light and a breeze.

“The rooms were bright with sunshine,” Moss said. “They were hot but well ventilated.”

The segregated school had wooden walls and wood floors. During its first seven years, classrooms filled with elementary students. On Sept. 8, 1931, the Star-Telegram announced that enrollment had grown so large, the “Negro School” would need to accommodate students up to seventh grade.

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that integration of public schools was the law of the land. The FWISD resisted. For more than three decades it fought lawsuits filed by the NAACP and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. Moss and his four brothers remained in segregated public schools.

Frank Moss graduated from the all-Black Dunbar Junior/Senior High in 1964 then enrolled at the University of Texas at Arlington. For the first time, he sat in classrooms with white students. Ultimately, he earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from UTA. He completed post-graduate work at Harvard University.

When full desegregation finally came to the FWISD, the historic Rosenwald School was not forgotten. It was modernized in 1978 to 1979. Updates included electricity, plumbing, a handicap-accessible ramp and new windows. The vocational room was converted into restrooms.

Nowadays, blue carpet covers the original wood floor. An air conditioner hums. Walls of sheetrock are painted pale yellow. Instead of classrooms, the building’s interior is a large, inviting meeting room with a circular reception counter in the center. At various times, the building has served as an alternate school and a branch of the school district’s Family Action Centers.

“I actually volunteered in it with the Center for Stop Six Heritage,” Phillips said. “Erecting a sign could be really great. People need to be aware of its historic significance.”

Several updates — such as aluminum siding and square windows — would likely disqualify the building from being listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It could, however, become a registered Fort Worth Landmark, because it is the site of historic events illustrating the social, economic and ethnic heritage of the city.

Landmark status would impose a 90-day demolition delay should the school district decide to move or demolish the schoolhouse.

The school could qualify for a bronze marker from the Texas Historical Commission. The commission has made an ongoing effort to identify, document and award markers to Rosenwald Schools.

Thomas Kellam, Tarrant County College District archivist, has helped Moss research and preserve materials about the building and the neighborhood.

Among the documented Rosenwald buildings still extant in Texas are structures in Anderson, Beeville, Mount Enterprise, Cedar Creek, Cuney, Columbia, Davilla, Dayton, Douglas Chapel outside Jefferson, Garrison, Globe Hill east of Giddings, Linden, Littig, Lockhart, Mount Vernon, Paducah, Pilot, Round Rock, Sand Flat in Rains County, Seguin, Shady Grove, St. Mary’s, Wharton, Wolfe City, Yoakum and York Creek.

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