Wild Cat Oil Well came in. The town of 1,000 became a town of 20,000 people almost over night. With each family, came numerous children until the classrooms were suddenly running over. Mrs. Angie Williams, teacher of third grade at that time, recalls the following experience: On Wednesday afternoon, November 23, 1924, at 4 o'clock, school was dismissed for the Thanksgiving holidays. The third grade consisted of 18 (eighteen) pupils ranging in ages from 9 to 10 years. On Thursday afternoon, the Simmons's well blew in making several thousand barrels of oil daily. Families began flocking into Wortham. By Monday morning the peaceful little town was seething with excitement; the children came from every direction to enroll in school. By 10:30 o'clock that morning, the teacher had enrolled 66 children in the third grade, making her a class of 84 in all. (Ibid. p. 211) They ranged from 8 to 14 years of age and came from public and parochial schools in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and New Mexico. Classrooms had desks to accommodate 24 children; so, after sitting them two to the desk and three if the children were small, wooden crates from the downtown merchants were lined up around the walls for the others. Due to lack of text books, most of the work had to be written on the board. What was true of the third grade was also in the other grades with exception of high school. Fewer high school children were enrolled. Uel L. Davis Jr., a first grade student at the time of the oil boom, recalled that he and several of the students who lived on the east side of town, continued their year of education in the home of Mrs. Ada Peurifoy. With the number of people and the types of people that had infiltrated the small town of Wortham, their parents did not feel it was safe for the children to cross through town to the public school. (Past Interview) By 1926, there were twenty-three teachers and 600 students in the school. With twenty-seven affiliated units of instruction offered, the school was placed on the southern accrediting list of high schools. During the 1920s and 1930s, the Wortham Independent Colored School was very progressive. Myrtle Randle Fowlks researched and found that in the year 1932, Mr. F. W. Wheeler became the principal and agriculture teacher. Mr. Wheeler, principal, developed a strong industrial