The “Forgotten” History of Mexican Schools in West Texas: Confronting Fantasy Heritage at the Blackwell School National Historical Site

The history of Mexican Schools throughout the West and Southwest is often hidden, obscured, or unknown, particularly in relation to mainstream US society. In late 2023, President Joseph Biden signed bipartisan legislation that converted the Blackwell School in Marfa, Texas, into a national historical site. One of less than a handful of Latinx memorials in the National Park Service, Blackwell served as a grassroots museum for 20 years before this designation. The proposed paper will address the site’s history as a Mexican School from its inception in 1909 as the local Mexican School under the authority of the Marfa Independent School District, through to its shuttering as a segregated school in response to Brown v. Board (1954), its use as a vocational high school, a storage facility, a local museum, and finally a national historic site. Operating from the idea that mainstream US history is replete with false or distorted accounts of the past for the promotion of a sanitized history, fantasy heritage (McWilliams, 1948; Perez & Ortega, 2020), the paper will explore how public memory myths were used to justify the segregation of Americans of Mexican descent during the era of separate but equal as well as how popular myths of the US as a land of opportunity and others have erased this important history from US popular culture. I will argue that the negative stereotypes of Mexicans (i.e., Mexicans and Mexican Americans) were used to segregate Mexican and Mexican American (i.e., Mexican/American) school children. Later, the teaching of fantasy heritage myths was used to justify Mexican/Americans’ marginalization. Blackwell recounts the experiences of its segregated alums and their families, offering a counter narrative to that of fantasy heritage. It, thereby, informs and complicates visitors’ understanding of this historical period in a respectful manner that facilitates this information exchange.