Brownsboro Schools - Harmony Likely As Board Quits

Brownsboro Schools - Harmony Likely As Board Quits

Staff Special to The News

Brownsboro, Texas. - Harmony appeared to have settled in the embattled Brownsboro School Board as all five remaining members of the board resigned in a quiet session Saturday.

The board simultaneously named four successors and left three vacancies to be filled in a regular April election.

At the meeting of the board in June, a fight erupted. Board secretary Dr. C. C. Rahm now is under indictment for murder in the death of lumber dealer Thurmond (sic) Jackson, shot to death during the fight.

Before resigning-completing a compromise agreement worked out in Austin with the held of State Commissioner of Education J. W. Edgar - the old board reinstated all teachers it had dismissed from the Negro school in the Moore's Station community.

Also under terms of the agreement, resignations came from ousted Supt. Homer Bass and Mrs. Jessie B. Bullock, principal of the Central High School for Negroes in the district. The resignations were submitted by attorneys Wayne Justice of Athens and Gordon Wynne of Wills Point.

Dr. Bass, who has since been elected supervisor of junior high schools for the Mesquite School District, was to receive payment for services up to last June. It was the failure of Bass to be rehired as superintendent after 23 years in that role that was blamed for the factional with last June.

Board members who resigned Saturday - still under terms of the compromise - were not to run for School Board offices in the next April elections.

As each member of the board resigned, remaining members and the new members would elect a man to succeed him.

R. E. Saxton, dairyman, was named president of the new board, with Herman Park, secretary, and R. R. Edwards and Willie Shelton as members. Resignations came from Ivan Long, Herman Mayfield, Wayne Smith, David Brand, and J. P. Parker.

Dr. Rahm, now under indictment, had previously resigned from the board. A seventh member of the board at the time of the June flare-up has moved from the district.

A letter from Education Commissioner Edgar on a newspaper report quoting him as "recommending" the ousted Supt. Bass for a position with the Mesquite School District denied "making any statement for or against Mr. Bass." In the letter, which Edgar sent to attorney Eugene Cavin of Tyler, he said "Mr. Bass was employed by the Mesquite Schools without any consultation with or recommendation from me."

The Tyler Morning Telegraph quoted Mesquite School Board President T. R. McDonald as saying he had not received a letter from Edgar recommending the hiring of Bass but had "talked with a number of people who told me that privately, he (Edgar) had heard recommendations of Bass from several school men.

Dallas Morning News
Sunday, September 4, 1960
Section 1, Page 1
source: GenealogyBank.com