Last year I visited some old abandoned historic buildings including the Mary Allen Seminary that operated from 1886-1972 in Crockett, Texas. This school was founded in 1886 by Reverend Richard Allen and his wife Mary Allen as the only school in Texas open to freed Afro-American women. The school was administered and taught by white women from a local Presbyterian Church. Unfortunately Mary Allen passed away in 1887; but they named the school after her. In 1924 The Texas school board appointed the first Afro-American administrator, Reverend Burt Smith, who made many important changes to the Mary Allen Seminary including: changing to an all Afro-American faculty, admitting Afro-American men, and changing the curriculum to include the sciences and providing needed vocational training like dressmaking, cooking, and other needed skills for the students to make it in
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