Exhibition Introduction - Learning the Classics in Austin
In early twentieth-century Austin, Black schools actively worked to make Latin and Greek accessible to students at all levels. Black students read Vergil, Xenophon and Horace as part of a broader project of Black education and community-building. As everywhere in the nation, Austin schools, too, were caught up in the political struggle around desegregation, changing the educational landscape in the city and with it students’ access to different subjects.
The Weekly Bulletin Annual Catalog Edition 1909-1910
Author: Lovinggood, Reuben Shannon
This course catalog of Samuel Huston College also functioned as an advertisement for the school. It prioritizes Latin and Greek in the first two years of the curriculum. The President of the college, Reuben Shannon Lovinggood, consistently praised the learning outcomes of the curriculum when soliciting donations.
Courtesy of George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center
The Weekly Bulletin Annual Catalog Edition 1909-1910
This section of the course catalog describes Austin in attractive terms, likely as advertisement for the college. Note especially the population change from then to now. As of the 2021 census, Austin has a population of nearly a million. The “magnificent Texas capitol building” was completed only twenty years before this catalog came out.
Courtesy of George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center
Preparatory course, The Weekly Bulletin Annual Catalog Edition 1909-1910
This curriculum for the preparatory course at Sam Huston College is dominated by Classics. The authors taught are Cicero, the great Roman politician, and Virgil, the poet of the Aeneid. Both authors are still regularly taught in introductory Latin courses, including in AP Latin and at UT Austin.
Courtesy of George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center
Preparatory Latin, The Weekly Bulletin Annual Catalog Edition 1909-1910
In Junior year Latin, students focused on the formal properties of Latin declensions, as well as increasingly complex sentences. Authors include Caesar, a Roman general who composed an account of his own conquest of Gaul (modern France), and Ovid, a witty poet who wrote love poetry and mythological works.
Courtesy of George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center
College Greek, The Weekly Bulletin Annual Catalog Edition 1909-1910
In the more advanced College Course, Greek plunged the student into the world of democratic Athens, or, if the instructor so chose, the epic poem, the Odyssey. Students read speeches, dramatic plays, and, of course, philosophy.
Courtesy of George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center
The Geyser, First Annual of the Anderson High School, June 1926.
Author: Cullen Readers and Booster Club, Anderson High School.
Like most yearbooks today, the Geyser celebrates the Anderson High Class of ‘26 through photographs, jokes, and anecdotes about student life. The Class of ‘26 maintained a high academic standard. In Junior year, pupils with marks averaging below a B+ were not allowed to continue both Latin and Science, but had to drop one of them.
Courtesy of George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center
Jokes and Caricature, The Geyser, 1926.
The first joke (illustrated in the caricature) refers to the four principal parts of the Latin verb, which students were required to memorize. The second refers to the famous saying: “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” first attested in 1190.
Courtesy of George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center
Locations of Anderson High School, First Original L.C. Anderson Alumni Reunion, 1991.
Anderson High occupied four different locations before its current site on Mesa Drive. Originally named the Robertson Hill School, it opened in 1889 on the corner of San Marcos and E 11th. In 1908, now renamed after L.C.’s brother Ernest H. Anderson, it moved to Olive Street, and in 1913 to the corner of Pennsylvania and Comal, where Kealing Middle School is now located. Following L.C.’s death in 1938 the school was renamed in his honor. From 1953 to its closure in 1971, the school was on Thompson Street.
Courtesy of the Austin History Center, Austin Public Library
Dedication to L.C. Anderson, The Geyser, 1926.
The First Annual edition of the Geyser is dedicated to L.C. Anderson, the school Principal, in recognition of his thirty years of service to Austin public schools. Before coming to Texas, Anderson took his A.B. from Fisk University and worked alongside Booker T. Washington at the Tuskegee Institute, Alabama.
Courtesy of George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center
