1940: A Community Banded Together to Benefit Their Kids

Published in the Kerrville Daily Times on May 23, 2026

Carver Park, located at 820 Webster, as it looks today. The park got its start in 1940 when two women petitioned
the Kerrville City Council to help them build a park so that children in the black community had a safe place to play. 

Hello, readers! I apologize for my prolonged absence. Over the past several weeks, my life has been completely focused on bringing the Smithsonian to Kerrville. The traveling exhibit, “Spark! Places of Innovation” opened last week and, at long last, I have time to write again.

The traveling exhibit by the Smithsonian celebrates innovations in rural areas — how small communities come together to solve a problem. There is a locally themed companion exhibit called “Small Towns, Big Ideas” that celebrates innovations in Kerr County. I thought I knew a lot about our county’s history before working on the “Small Towns” exhibit. I actually had a lot to learn.

Today’s column tells a story I discovered while doing research for the exhibit. It’s the story of how Kerrville’s black community banded together to give their children a safe place to play.  
In the summer of 1940, two women approached the Kerrville City Council with a need: Kerrville’s black children didn’t have a safe or appropriate place to play ball.

Lillian Shallowhorne, president of the Doyle High School Parent-Teacher Association, and Della Mae Franklin, president of the Mary Margaret Bethune Club at the Kerrville State Hospital (an organization of female employees at the hospital), started the movement to establish a park in Kerrville’s black community, now known as the Doyle Community.
The petition read: “We hereby take the liberty of appealing to your honorable body for a park for the negro children. These children have no place to play, and no place to go for recreation, except beer parlors. We know full well the effect of such places upon those whom we hope to make good, law-abiding and useful citizens. We trust that you will give this matter your earnest consideration.”  

The women suggested the park be named after Austin P. Hancock, Kerrville’s city manager at the time.

The petition was signed by the full membership of both the Bethune Club and Doyle PTA. Appeals were sent to residents throughout Kerrville to support the park project.
The movement gained traction in February 1941, when the Schreiner family donated land from the A.C. Schreiner estate for the park’s location. The land was valued at $1,000, and the family donated half the cost of the land so the property could be purchased for $500. The City of Kerrville and the Doyle Community both raised the additional money to acquire the land.
A committee of residents from the Doyle Community was formed to clear the land and make improvements necessary to for park purposes. The committee included residents J.C. Mills, J.J. Bouldin, Phil Threadgill, Clyde Dimery, Lester Fifer Sr., J.H Mills, Joe Eggleston and Thad Smith. The park was built in a week, and the first ball game was played on the park’s baseball diamond that very weekend.

Once the park was built, it became a hub of activity in the Doyle Community and launched professional sports careers for many black children who grew up nearby. The baseball diamond was known to produce strong ball players who were hard to beat, due to it being built on a slight slope. Players would have to run uphill for a lot of the major plays.

The park was never named after the city manager. For decades, the park was only known as the “Kerrville Colored Park” or “Negro Community Park.” Sometime around 1955, the park was named “George Washington Carver Park” after the famous black inventor and scientist.

The park became home to the Kerrville All Stars Baseball team, an African-American adult baseball team that would play teams from other Texas towns. Home games were big events, and the stands would fill with a mixed population that loved to watch the All Stars play.

Kerrville All Stars, about 1949. Photo courtesy of Joe Herring, Jr.

Former Kerrville All Stars Joe Lewis and Marion Shaw. Negro Hall of Fame
inductees with their baseball memorabilia. Courtesy photo.

Former Kerrville All Stars include Negro Baseball Hall of Fame Inductees William “Bill” Haynes (1901-81), Marion “Mona” Shaw and Joe “Little Boy” Lewis (1936-2019). Another well-known All Star was Jesse Stokes, who became a pro football player for the Minnesota Vikings.

Today, the park is still a safe place to play and the hub of the Doyle Community and stands as a testament to what determined mothers can accomplish when they want their children to have a safe place to play and grow up to be good citizens.