Community celebrates saving Montopolis Negro School

Myrtle Robinson started attending the Montopolis Negro School when she was 7 years old.

Schools were still segregated in the 1940s, and she remembers walking to the one-room schoolhouse with her siblings from their home on Burleson Road. The school had two teachers and about 30 students. Students were served hot meals, and they exercised daily. Next door was the old St. Edwards Baptist Church, where Robinson was baptized; it has since been torn down.

Robinson, now 85, stood Saturday outside the old school building — a staple in the community where she has lived all her life — joined by about a dozen other former students to celebrate the city's decision last month to purchase the property through eminent domain, a move that saved the old school from demolition.

"I'm very grateful," Robinson said, surrounded by her former classmates. "If it was gone, it would be like losing a part of me."

The Jim Crow-era school at 500 Montopolis Drive, which operated from 1935 to 1962, is one of the last surviving structures among 42 rural schools that Travis County operated for black children when Austin schools refused to enroll them. The school initially was built off Bastrop Highway, but a tornado destroyed it in 1935. St. Edwards Baptist Church donated the 1.8 acres of land on Montopolis Drive, where the structure made from old Army barracks sits today, covered by tin and surrounded by weeds.

The property was poised to become a mixed-use development after Austin Stowell of KEEP Real Estate purchased it in 2015. But the Montopolis Neighborhood Plan Contact Team and Montopolis Neighborhood Association fought for more than two years to save the historic landmark so it could be preserved.

On Jan. 22, a special 3-member city commission voted to buy the property through eminent domain for $464,000 with the goal of turning it into a museum and cultural center paid for by hotel taxes.

"It's a big victory for not just for the African-American community but all of Austin," Susana Almanza of the Montopolis Neighborhood Association said at the barbecue Saturday celebrating the decision. "Because everyone's history is so important, and we cannot forget that."

Stowell had suggested preserving the school as part of the planned redevelopment, but he did not intend to fight the eminent domain action, he told the American-Statesman on Saturday. However, Stowell has obtained an independent appraiser and planned to dispute the city's valuation, which he said is too low and doesn't reflect market value.

Former student Georgia Steen attending Saturday's celebration, said the school was more than just a place for education, it was a social center for the community. She recalled how people would golf and play baseball in the fields surrounding the school, how they hunted Easter eggs outside the old church and danced around a maypole before classes let out for the summer.

She said the property isn't just a piece of real estate, it's a cultural landmark.

Fred McGhee, president of the Montopolis Community Development Corp., said it would have been a shame for the site to be redeveloped.

"The history here is too important, and there's a public purpose for preserving it for future generations," he said. "I want my children to be able to come here and see and experience this history and not just read about it in a book or look at it on a marker.”