CALABOOSE AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY MUSEUM
The Mitchell Center is a historic building in San Marcos that was once a part of the Colored School, which was the local school for Black children during segregated times. Its significance in the community has rallied people behind the fight to restore it and put it to good use. During Black History Month, the museum hosted Kyev Tatum, who discussed the history behind getting the Mitchell Center back into the hands of the Black community and restoring it to its former glory.
Michele Burleson, Calaboose board vice president, introduced Tatum and talked about the significance of the building.
“My mother went to the San Marcos Colored School. … They went to school in circumstances that were nothing like us; they didn’t have a bathroom. Like my sister said earlier, there was no library. They had the bare minimum of things,” Burleson said. “Our whole life, it was about the things in the community that meant something. It was always about history and trying to preserve the history. And that’s why I’m here today because I made my mama a promise, maybe 15 years ago, about a building that she went to school in and she graduated from.”
Tatum said when he was younger, still living in San Marcos and still “wild,” he started attending Jackson Chapel where the pastor at the time was the president of the school board.
“She said, ‘50% of the Black kids in San Marcos are entering school and are not graduating, and that was on her mind,” Tatum said. “I knew I had to do something.”
Tatum was in one of the leadership San Marcos classes, which attended an event at the Fire Department training facility.
“And I saw this old building, and it had burned a little bit and had bars on it, and it was just a rat infested, dilapidated structure,” Tatum said, adding that he asked the fire chief what it was. “He said, ‘That’s a part of the old Colored School from back in the day, and when the big building burned down … they moved it over here. And it’s just been sitting over here.’ And an epiphany happened, divine providence, whatever you want to call it; I said, ‘That is a center for our children.’” Tatum said they were planning to move it to MLK Drive at the intersection with Mitchell Street, but many did not want that “rat infested, dilapidated structure on our main street.” So the city of San Marcos offered some land that it had acquired on 715 Valley Street, where it stands today.
“[At that point], It was all about where are we going to find the money? Where are we going to find the money to move it? Where are we going to find the money to renovate it? And I didn’t have a clue,” Tatum said.
Between donations from former San Marcos Mayor Kathy Morris and former Hays County Judge Eddy Etheredge, they were able to move the building. Plans were underway.
“It sparked something in this community that we’re now celebrating, that’s becoming a museum,” Tatum said, adding that many people put their blood, sweat and tears into the restoration of the center. “It took us six months to renovate the building. So I always say this, not only can we do better together, we can get more done together. … And the idea was, do a little. If everybody does a little, a lot will get done.”
They applied for a grant from the Meadows Foundation, and they got it.
“They gave us $93,200 because they believed in what we were trying to do,” he said.
Tatum said they started doing some after school programs at the Mitchell Center, and former Texas State Representative Rick Green asked him if he’d considered starting a charter school.
“After much prayer and consideration, we applied for a charter school in 2000 and became the First entity in San Marcos with a charter school, and that was able to take us over so that we would have a budget to be able to operate our other programs,” Tatum said. “Just out of need, out of necessity, God created this opportunity.”
Then the Boys and Girls Club of America wanted to use the building as well, and they became the first entity in the country to run both a charter school and Boys and Girls Club, that was university affiliated, out of one building. They had achieved their goals.
“By 2004, I reached the pinnacle. … I decided to take a sabbatical, which I thought was going to be a year off, and it ended up being 20 years,” Tatum said. “I always want to tell young people, if you can conceive it and you believe it, you can achieve it. I was green. I’d never been through anything like that. I was young, I was hyper. I was a bulldog. I just pushed through.”
The Boys and Girls Club has since vacated the building. It had been in the ownership of the city of San Marcos until Dec. 18, 2024, when it was officially transferred to the Calaboose African American History Museum. It is slated to be the site of a second African American history museum in order to celebrate more of the rich history of San Marcos.
