Welcome to the Park of the Month newsletter for October 2025. This month we’re featuring the first US national park site dedicated to telling the story of Latino American school segregation.
Blackwell School National Historic Site
Location
Marfa, Texas, United States
Claim to fame
In July of 2024, Blackwell School National Historic Site officially became the 430th US national park site. A school complex with several buildings, Blackwell School once taught over 600 Latino students who were not allowed to attend other Marfa schools due to ethnic segregation.
Segregated schools for Latinos existed throughout the American Southwest in the late 19th to mid-20th centuries. The Blackwell School closed in 1965 when the Marfa school system was finally integrated, more than a decade after racial educational segregation was declared illegal in the US.
Reason to visit
Today Blackwell School NHS consists of two remaining buildings–the original three-room schoolhouse and an additional classroom building. Both buildings are historic and well-preserved examples of local construction. The site displays exhibits and artifacts that tell the story of the school’s difficult past.
As the park is still in its infancy, visiting hours are limited. A plan created by the Blackwell School Alliance (a group of mostly former Blackwell students who raised money to preserve the site) and their partners would see the park expanded and integrated into the local thriving artist community of Marfa.
Wild Fact
Blackwell School students were not allowed to speak Spanish while at school, and those breaking this rule were often beaten with a paddle. Many students recall attending a ceremonial funeral service for their use of the Spanish language, in which teachers forced students to write “I will not speak Spanish” on slips of paper which were then buried for the entire school to witness.
In 2007, a group of former Blackwell students came together at the school to bury and then unearth a small coffin that held a pocket Spanish dictionary, a symbolic act that helped them reclaim their language and history. Today the paddle used to discipline them for speaking Spanish sits behind glass as an exhibit at the national historic site.
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