Howardville School keeps a Black community story on Highway 61

Howardville School gives New Madrid County a story that should not get lost under earthquake and river notes. A Missouri State Parks survey describes Howardville as a Black suburb of New Madrid that began in the 1940s and was named for Professor Howard, a longtime educator and principal of O’Bannon School.

The school itself was built in 1958. The survey says Black children in Howardville had previously gone to grade school in Lilbourn and high school in New Madrid, and that Howardville School helped consolidate area Black schools.

The classroom details are plain and powerful. The survey records teachers by name, notes that the faculty once numbered fourteen, and says books and materials were secondhand from the white school. It also says desegregation occurred in 1966, but the town’s mostly Black community meant the cultural effect was different than in places where a few Black children entered much larger white schools.

For a reader, Howardville School adds a needed layer to the county page: Black education, local self-definition, Highway 61 community life, and the long afterlife of school buildings. Check current local sources before assuming anything about present access or use.