Jarvis Christian College

Jarvis Christian College, a fully accredited four-year private liberal arts college offering associate's and bachelor's degrees, is at Hawkins, in southeastern Wood County. It was originally known as Jarvis Christian Institute, and ever since the school's founding in 1912 it has been affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). By 1988 it was the only historically Black college that remained of the twelve such Black colleges originally founded by the Christian Church. The school, modeled after the Southern Christian Institute in Edwards, Mississippi, held its first formal classes in January 1913 with twelve elementary-level students. In 1904 the Negro Disciples of Christ in Texas and the Christian Woman's Board of Missions began collaborating to raise money for the school's establishment: the Negro Disciples of Christ (primarily because of efforts by the women of the churches), raised $1,000, and the Christian Woman's Board of Missions contributed $10,000 more. At around the same time, Virginia Hearne, state secretary for women's work, contacted Ida Van Zandt Jarvis, who with her husband, Maj. James Jones Jarvis, in 1910 deeded 456 acres to the Christian Woman's Board of Missions to "keep up and maintain a school for the elevation and education of the Negro race...in which school there shall be efficient religious and industrial training."

In 1912 construction began, led by Southern Christian Institute graduates Thomas Buchanan Frost (who served as the first superintendent) and Charles Albert Berry (the first principal), and with help from the school's potential students. James Nelson Ervin of Johnson City, Tennessee, became the school's first president in 1914. That year the school began officially teaching high school courses; until 1937 it was the only accredited high school exclusively for Blacks in the area. The school began regularly offering junior college courses in 1927 and was incorporated as a college the next year. Senior college courses were offered beginning in 1937. When Peter Clarence Washington became the second president in 1938, high school classes were eliminated. In 1939 the college was granted its charter by the state of Texas, and in 1950 Jarvis Christian College was included by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools on its "Approved List of Colleges and Universities for Negro Youth," the only regional accreditation available at that time for Black colleges in the South.