During the 1880s, many African American communities in the area, including Teal Prairie, Cedar Creek, and Six Mile, lacked formal schools. In 1894, Horace and Charles Smith opened Smith Grade High School near Rita to serve the surrounding communities. Its first principal, Daniel Porter (1863-1916), later published the Central Texas Teacher newspaper and founded the Brenham Normal and Industrial College. Classes first met on the lower floor of the Knights of Pythias hall because the school had no building of its own. In 1919, funding from the Julius Rosenwald Fund, which sought to improve education for African American students primarily in the southern U.S., made it possible to build a permanent two-classroom schoolhouse. As enrollment from nearby communities grew, the two classrooms were divided into four. Attendance rose greatly in the 1930s, leading to the addition of another building for vocational agriculture, three more classrooms added to the original building, a teacher's cottage, and home economics classes. The school continued growing until the 1960s, when desegregation dissolved the Friendship School District that oversaw several area African American schools, and rural-to-urban migration also reduced the population and contributed to the school's closure. Smith Grade High School was one of the first schools in the area devoted to giving young African Americans vocational and academic skills, and although many of its buildings were later razed, former students and graduates cherish its memory and achievements.