Back in the day, students across the country attended segregated schools: ones for whites and ones for blacks. This model of separating students by race persisted along a “separate but equal” doctrine supported by lawmakers across the United States. When the school districts in Harris County were first created in 1884, only about half of them offered an education to African American children. For the districts that did not offer anything for these students, they either went without an education, or had to travel to a neighboring district for their schooling.