A 100-year-old Edinburg school is now recognized as a historic place. It was once only for Mexican and Mexican-American students.

It took a teacher a year's worth of research and nearly a three-year wait, so they could finally name Stephen F. Austin Elementary School as a historic place.

In May, the school will be getting a Texas historical marker.

"I would consider myself an expert," Stephen F. Austin Elementary School Paraprofessional Julian Hernandez said.

Hard work is paying off for Hernandez.

"I feel like I know this school better than I know myself," Hernandez said.

Hernandez is a paraprofessional computer teacher, but now he's created a history lesson for future generations.

"The school was the Mexican school back in the '20s when it was opened," Hernandez said.

Hernandez learned through his research that 100 years ago schools in Edinburg were segregated by race and ethnicity.

Anglo and Black students went to separate schools and Mexican and Mexican-American students attended Stephen F. Austin Elementary.

"Well, I didn't know that there was an original building, I didn't know that in 1921 the original building was built," Hernandez said.

The current building was rebuilt 100 years ago in 1926. Through Hernandez's research on its history, next month the school will unveil a Texas historical marker.

Gloria Morales lives just a few blocks away. She went to Austin Elementary in the early 1960s. That was just five years after the Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation in public schools through Brown v. Board of Education.

Morales believes it's important to preserve the school.

"It's good to have it. I don't want it to go down," Morales said.

Inside the school, crews found the remnants believed to show racial segregation from the era. It now hangs in the library.

"The beam says 'Mexican School, Edinburg, Texas, keep dry,' and the significance of that is term "keep dry." Keep dry essentially is using the connotation of 'mojado', wetback, from back then," Hernandez said.

The Texas historical marker will be another way to preserve the legacy of the school, so it's not forgotten.

The dedication will be on May 14 with the historic plaque to help tell the story of what happened here at Stephen F. Austin Elementary.

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