Friona became the first town in Texas to integrate its schools. The first school on this site opened in 1908 in a one-room frame building with Roxie Witherspoon teaching 18 pupils. A two-story brick school finished in 1911 burned after lightning struck it in 1922, and a new two-story brick high school opened in 1924. Attendance grew in the 1940s when rural schools at Lakeview, Messenger, Black, and Rhea consolidated with Friona. In 1954, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Plessy v. Ferguson in Brown v. Board of Education and declared segregation in public education unconstitutional, the Robert Walker, Jr. family arrived in town in September. Superintendent Dalton Caffey enrolled Walker's three African American sons in Friona's only school, quietly creating the first integrated public school in Texas. He then informed the school board of his decision, and the change generally went smoothly for the school and the new students. The Walkers moved away during the school year, and in the spring of 1955 three more African American students attended school there. Since that watershed year, Friona schools have continued to uphold Caffey's wish for equal educational opportunity.