Texas’s First College for Black Women Lies in Ruins. Can It Find a New Purpose?

In the nineties, when I was growing up in the small East Texas town of Crockett, about a two-hour drive north of Houston, I could see nothing impressive about Mary Allen College. In fact, I could barely see its last remaining building, a decrepit, four-story brick structure, at all, because it was obscured by tall grass and debris. Vines had crept over much of it, and broken windows gave it a foreboding air. Sometimes kids joked that the college was haunted, but mostly, we ignored it. Today, with the grass mowed and the debris cleared, you can see the building from the street. A newcomer might wonder exactly what it is they are looking at. A historical marker out front explains that this place was…

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