Butler College (Texas)
high school turned college in Tyler, Texas, United States
Butler College (1905–1972) was an American co-educational black school in Tyler, Texas. It started as a combined elementary and high school, and became a junior college by 1924; by 1951, it was a senior college, before reverting back to a junior college in 1960. Butler College closed in 1972, after an enrollment decline. A historical plaque for Butler College (marker 15480) was erected near 1900 Bellwood Road by Texas Historical Commission in 2008.
History
Established in 1905 by the East Texas Baptist Association, the school was originally called the East Texas Normal and Industrial Academy, and was initially a combined elementary and high school, but some sources state it was originally named the East Texas Baptist Academy. Rev. C. M. Butler (or Cornelius Moses Butler; 1844–1924) served as the first president of the school, and he was the moderator of the East Texas Baptist Association. T. C. Bledsoe was the school's first principal.
By 1910, the school had 129 enrolled students and six teachers. The school introduced junior college-level courses in 1924, and the name was changed to Butler College following the death of its first president, Rev.
“Butler College (Texas)” enters the record as high school turned college in Tyler, Texas, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Butler, College and Texas can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q62352779. Authority coordinates are 32.340, -95.322. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1905, 1972, 1924 and 1951.
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This entry incorporates text from “Butler College (Texas)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.