Laurine Cecil Anderson
(1853-1938)
Born the son of slave parents in Tennessee, Laurine Cecil Anderson attended public schools in Memphis and college at Fisk University in Nashville. He came to Texas in 1880 to accept a position as Principal of a training school in Brenham. He married Lizzie Pollard in 1882, and they had four children. After her death, he married Fannie Pollard, and they had one child.
In 1884 Governor Oran M. Roberts appointed Anderson Principal of Prairie View Normal and Industrial College, now Prairie View A&M University. When the Colored Teachers State Association was formed in Prairie View in 1885, he was elected its first President and served until 1889.
In 1896 Anderson resigned his position at Prairie View to become Principal of Austin’s Robertson Hill High School, which was renamed E. H. Anderson High School in 1909 in honor of L. C. Anderson’s brother, also an educator. The school was at the time the only high school for blacks in the city, and L. C. Anderson served as its principal for thirty-two years.
L. C. Anderson died January 8, 1938, and is buried in Oakwood cemetery. Two days after his death the Austin School Board voted unanimously to rename Anderson High School in his honor.
Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986.