I.M. Terrell High School

History

In 1882, Isaiah Milligan Terrell (1859–1931) became the head of East Ninth Street Colored School, the first free public school for African Americans in Fort Worth. Terrell became Principal and Superintendent of Colored Schools in 1890. In 1906, the school moved to a location at East Twelfth and Steadman Streets, and was renamed North Side Colored School No. 11. A new school building opened in 1910, with Terrell as principal. In 1915, Terrell left the school to become an administrator at Prairie View State Normal and Industrial College (now Prairie View A&M University). The school was renamed I.M Terrell High School in 1921, in honor of the former principal.

In 1938, the school moved to an existing structure (a former white elementary school) at 1411 East Eighteenth Street in the Baptist Hill neighborhood. The building was expanded as part of a Works Progress Administration project. The school's former location became an elementary and junior high school.

In 1940, the Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools for Negroes (ACSSN) selected I.M. Terrell High School to participate as an experimental site in the Secondary School Study (also known as the Black High School Study). The study, funded by the General Education Board, sought to include African American teachers in the development of progressive education. According to the study, by the 1940s the school had 26 faculty members serving 900 students in grades 9 through 11.

In addition to serving students in Fort Worth, the school drew students from areas outside the city, including Arlington, Bedford, Benbrook, Burleson, Roanoke, and Weatherford, where African American children could not attend school.

I.M. Terrell High School closed in 1973 during racial integration of Fort Worth's schools. The building reopened in 1998 as I.M. Terrell Elementary School. In 2004, the portion of East Eighteenth Street around the school was renamed I.M. Terrell Circle South.

Music program

G.A. Baxter was the school's music instructor during the mid-twentieth century, when several students who would later become prominent jazz and rhythm and blues musicians attended the school. Various accounts portray Baxter as encouraging his students "to push the boundaries of sound," or as "a stern band director who hated jazz." Free jazz innovator Ornette Coleman was in the school band until he was dismissed for improvising during "The Washington Post." Fellow musicians John Carter, King Curtis, Prince Lasha, Charles Moffett, and Dewey Redman all attended I.M. Terrell with Coleman. Julius Hemphill, Ronald Shannon Jackson, Cornell Dupree, Billy Tom Robinson, Thomas Reese and Ray Sharpe also graduated from I.M. Terrell.

In a 1981 Musician interview, Ronald Shannon Jackson recalls:

Dallas was bigger than Fort Worth, but Fort Worth always had the cats who were on the money in terms of the music. It had a lot to do with our music teacher there, Mr. Baxter. He played all the instruments. He loved to perfect a band. He put his whole life into music — to the point it would drive him mad, so dedicated, totally dedicated. A lot of people come through this man: he was Ornette Coleman's teacher, he was Dewey Redman's teacher, he was Julius Hemphill's teacher, Charles Moffett's teacher and John Carter's and mine. King Curtis, my father's cousin, also came from there.

Athletic program

From 1951 until 1966, I.M. Terrell High School was part of the Prairie View Interscholastic League, which reintegrated with the University Interscholastic League in 1970. Robert Hughes, who became the United States' winningest high school basketball coach in 2003, coached the basketball team at Terrell from 1958 until the school's closure.