On October 17, 2022, President Joseph Biden signed The Blackwell School National Historic Site Act, bringing the former segregated ‘Mexican school’ into the National Park Service. Blackwell School, located in Marfa, Texas, operated from 1909-1965 as a school for Mexican and Mexican American children. The school, and others like it, are garnering interest from scholars of the Mexican experience in the United States. In the case of Blackwell School, its designation as a National Historic Site has brought national attention to the rural community of Marfa and to the decades-long efforts of Blackwell alumni to tell their stories. This panel addresses the ongoing preservation efforts at the Blackwell School National Historic Site, and it examines the long-lasting implications of discrimination against Mexican and Mexican American students. The panel is specifically aimed toward scholars interested in historic preservation, Chicanx and Latinx history, and education history.

In 2024, Dr. Frank G. Pérez and Dr. Nancy Aguirre worked with the National Park Service to collect documents and oral histories related to Blackwell School. This panel gives the audience an opportunity to view photos and listen to interviews of Blackwell School alumni and community members involved in the school’s preservation. Dr. Pérez and Dr. Aguirre will first present these sources and describe the ongoing preservation efforts. Dr. Pérez will then present a paper entitled “The “Forgotten” History of Mexican Schools in West Texas: Confronting Fantasy Heritage at the Blackwell School National Historical Site.” This paper explores how fantasy heritage narratives perpetuated stereotypes of Mexicans and Mexican Americans, helping to justify segregation. Dr. Pérez argues that the preservation efforts around Blackwell School are an example of a community uniting to prevent the sanitizing of its history. Next, Dr. Aguirre will analyze the broad effects of language discrimination. Her paper, entitled “Burying "Mr. Spanish": The Blackwell School and the Implications of Language Discrimination,” examines the immediate and long-lasting consequences of language discrimination on the students at Blackwell, where they could be physically punished for speaking Spanish. She argues that many of the educational barriers for these students, including forced assimilation, and discrimination based on language and citizenship, continue to impact English Learners across U.S. public schools, resulting in lower educational attainment.

The current preservation efforts at Blackwell School demonstrate the value and urgency of historic preservation. Segregated Mexican schools commonly operated during the first half of the twentieth century, and many of those structures no longer exist. Moreover, surviving alumni of these schools are elderly. Time is of the essence for conducting oral histories and gathering primary source materials related to these Mexican schools. The aim of this panel is to give audience members a framework for this type of historical research.