page_title: Houston Independent School District
section_title: 20th century
hierarchical_section_title: Houston Independent School District / History / 20th century
caption_attribution_description: English: Former Houston Independent School District headquarters: Hattie Mae White Administration Building Español: La antigua sede del Distrito Escolar Independiente de Houston, el Edificio Administrativo Hattie Mae White
context_page_description: The Houston Independent School District is the largest public school system in Texas, and the eight-largest in the United States. Houston ISD serves as a community school district for most of the city of Houston and several nearby and insular municipalities in addition to some unincorporated areas. Like most districts in Texas it is independent of the city of Houston and all other municipal and county jurisdictions. The district has its headquarters in the Hattie Mae White Educational Support Center in Houston.
  In 2016, the school district was rated "met standards" by the Texas Education Agency.
context_section_description: The Brunner Independent School District merged into Houston schools in 1913-1914.
  Houston ISD was established in 1923 after the Texas Legislature voted to separate the city's schools from the municipal government.
  In the 1920s, at the time Edison Oberholtzer was superintendent, Hubert L. Mills, the business manager of the district, had immense political power in HISD. He had been in the employment of the district over one decade before Oberholtzer started. By the 1930s the two men were in a power struggle.
  The number of students in public schools in Houston increased from 5,500 in 1888 to over 8,850 in 1927.
  In the 1920s, the school district expanded its infrastructure to accommodate a growing number of black students. There were 8,293 students in Houston's schools for black students in the 1924-1925 school year. In 1927, Houston ISD annexed the Harrisburg School District's colored school. The district also built new schools such as the former Jack Yates High School (later Ryan Middle School) and Wheatley High School. The capacity of Houston's secondary schools for black children increased by three times from 1924 to 1929. The original secondary school for blacks was named Colored High School (now Booker T. Washington High School). At the time, the district's three secondary schools for black students had junior high and senior high levels. There were 12,217 students in the black schools in the 1929-1930 school year. William Henry Kellar, author of Make Haste Slowly: Moderates, Conservatives, and School Desegregation in Houston, wrote that conditions in black schools "improved dramatically" in the 1920s.
  Houston ISD absorbed portions of the White Oak Independent School District in 1937 and portions of the Addicks Independent School District after its dissolution.
  In the fall of 1960 12 black students were admitted to HISD schools previously reserved for whites. The racial integration efforts in HISD, beginning in 1960, were characterized by a lack of violence and turmoil as business leaders sought not to cause disruption. Prior to 1960 HISD was the largest racially segregated school system in the United States.
  In the mid-1960s Gertrude Barnstone and Black board member Hattie Mae White, the sole politically liberal members of the school board, often clashed with more conservative board members in meetings held on Monday nights; the two women made efforts to racially integrate the schools. During the 1960s, HISD's school board instituted a phase-in with each subsequent grade being integrated. Local African-American leaders believed the pace was too slow, and William Lawson, a youth minister, asked Wheatley students to boycott school. Five days afterwards 10% of Wheatley students attended classes. In 1970 a federal judge asked the district to speed the integration process.
  Simultaneously Mexican Americans were being discriminated against when they were being labeled as whites and being put with only African Americans as part of HISD's desegregation / integration plan.  This kept both Mexican Americans and African Americans away from Anglos while satisfying integration requirements set forth by the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education court case decision.  Many Mexican Americans took their children out of the public schools and put them in "huelga," or protest schools. On August 31, 1970 and organized by the Mexican-American Education Council (MAEC), they began three weeks of boycotts, protests, and picketing.  This action lasted approximately three weeks, during which up to 75% of the student bodies of some high schools participated in the boycotts.  During the protests MAEC demanded twenty issues to be resolved and HISD began rezoning school areas within its jurisdiction in response.  However, this rezoning encouraged "white flight" since minorities were now entering "white schools" in large numbers. At first the district used forced busing, but later switched to a voluntary magnet school program in order to discourage "white flight".
  The district eventually integrated races in a semi-peaceful manner. River Oaks Elementary Sc
caption: The first Hattie Mae White Administration Building. It has been sold and demolished. The building was replaced by the Hattie Mae White Educational Support Center.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA", "Image Make": "OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP.", "Image Model": "FE100,X710", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "314", "Image YResolution": "314", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "1.2", "Image DateTime": "2005:01:01 00:00:01", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "840", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 37, 0, 1, 0, 22, 0, ... ]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "3556", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5287", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/1000", "EXIF FNumber": "21/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Creative", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "64", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2005:01:01 00:00:01", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2005:01:01 00:00:01", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "317/100", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "31/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2272", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1704", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "3432", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Landscape", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}