UTSA graduate documents school’s past, raises awareness of segregation’s impact in Texas

The Blackwell School in Marfa, Texas.

OCTOBER 11, 2023 — UTSA graduate student Alexandra Medina got her chance to help record a piece of Texas history this past summer.

As part of an internship with the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), Medina helped interview alumni, decedents and community members about the once segregated Blackwell School for Mexican American children in one of the most notable small towns in Texas—Marfa.

Built in the early 1900s, the schoolhouse was designated a National Historical Site in the fall of 2022, thanks in part to the efforts of the Blackwell School Alliance, an organization that began preserving the school in 2006.

“Through my research and because of this project with NPCA, I found that there’s a lot of untold or overlooked history about Mexican Americans, especially in the public school system,” said Medina, who is pursuing her master’s degree in history this fall. “Not a lot of people in Texas understand the gravity of de facto segregation and Juan Crow.”

“Marfa wasn’t an anomaly in Texas; it’s representative of a shared experience for a lot of people.”

UTSA graduate student Alexandra Medina conducted interviews for the Blackwell School Alliance’s website for archival purposes.

According to Medina, segregation brings to mind the separation of African Americans and Anglos in the U.S. and Texas, but “because there is such a large Mexican American population, a lot of them were segregated as well.” 

Medina first took an interest in Blackwell School during a visit to West Texas with other UTSA students and history professor Kirsten Gardner, a faculty member in the UTSA College of Liberal and Fine Arts. She completed a research project for Gardner’s class, focusing on the lack of Mexican American representation in Texas’ public-school history.  

Gardner connected Medina with Cristóbal López ’22, a Texas field representative with the NPCA, who was looking for interns to help with the oral history project he started about Blackwell.

“We envisioned Blackwell as a place that could tell the story of segregated Mexican American education in Marfa and then transcend that to tell the story of segregated Mexican American education across the southwest,” López said. “The Blackwell School wasn’t an isolated incident.”

Segregated schools for Mexican American children were spread across southern Texas and the borderlands from Texas to California, he said, adding that even some people in those areas don’t know the history.

The Blackwell School consists of two buildings—the original 1909 adobe schoolhouse and a smaller 1927 classroom building known as the Band Hall. Both now house photographs and memorabilia donated by former students.

Medina helped record and transcribe interviews that, once finished, will be available on the Blackwell School Alliance’s website for public viewing and archival purposes. In total, about 15 people who attended other segregated schools, not just Blackwell, were interviewed for this project.

Two of those interviewees left a lasting impact on Medina.

One interview was with the great granddaughter of a former Blackwell student, which Medina described as “surreal.”  

“She talked about that feeling of not knowing where she came from and hearing from her abuelo (grandfather) about his experiences growing up, and then her experience visiting Blackwell,” Medina said. “She finally felt like she had a space that she could point to and say, ‘Ok, that’s my history. That’s where I came from’. I think that for a lot of Mexican Americans in Texas, Blackwell is going to act as that space.”

Things took a personal turn for Medina, who also had a chance to interview her grandmother for the project. As a child, her grandmother attended Westside Elementary, a segregated school in Pearsall, a town about an hour south of San Antonio.      

“Marfa wasn’t an anomaly in Texas; it’s representative of a shared experience for a lot of people,” Medina said. “Hearing my abuelita’s story fueled my passion for the research and work I’d been doing at the Blackwell School. It made it all that more important to me.”

Medina will be travelling to Salt Lake City to present her summer research at the National Council of Public History this spring. She’ll join López on a panel that will include representatives from The University of Texas at El Paso and the Blackwell School Alliance.

Because of her internship, Medina said she’s open to a possible career with the NPCA after graduation.

“This experience has made me very appreciative of the education I received at UTSA, especially from the history department and Dr. Gardner,” Medina said. “I see how the last four years of my studies and my hard work has paid off. The hands-on experience really assured me that this is what I want to do and that continuing with my master’s is the right decision for me. I am really excited for what my M.A. will bring.”

— Michelle Gaitan