FULSHEAR, Texas (Covering Katy News) - A Fulshear elementary school scheduled to open in the fall of 2024 will be named after the first and only African American woman to serve as the city's Mayor.
Viola Gilmore Randle was 96 when she died in September 2020. The school named in her honor opens in August 2024.
Last week, voters approved constructing the new school when they passed Proposition A, which will allow for five new schools in the Lamar Consolidated School District.
Lamar CISD has about 42,000 students, but projections from an explosion in home developments estimate the district's size will increase to 78,000 students in the next nine years. As a result, the school district plans to add 17 elementary schools over the next decade.
Randle was a pioneer for the rights of women and African Americans. She owned businesses and fought for equal rights. Born in 1924 on Walker Farms in Fulshear, she was the middle child. Her family grew cotton and raised horses, cows, and chickens.
She graduated from Wallis High School and married Lloyd Randle, and the two bought a home in downtown Fulshear.
In the 1970s, the Randles purchased the downtown Fulshear Texaco station.
"We made history as we owned the first real business for blacks in Fulshear," she said in a 2012 interview with the Fort Bend Herald.
Randle said the people in Fulshear accepted them and did not face the prejudice common in other communities.
Soon, Randle became concerned about water and sewer issues and thought Fulshear needed beautification. So she ran for alderman, got elected, and helped lead the city's improvement efforts.
She ran for Mayor in the 1990s and was easily elected.
She and her husband eventually sold the Texaco station, but they opened a second business, Randle's Pick-Up Service and Trash Hauling. Randle continued running the company after her husband died in 1999.
In 2009, the Houston League of Business and Professional Women honored her with the prestigious Trailblazer Award.
She is most proud of her role in constructing the Irene Stern Community Center, which started while she was Mayor. It opened in 2009.
"I was the mayor at the time, and the people requested a center because we didn't have a meeting place in town," Randle told the Fort Bend Herald.
"We received a grant from the government to build the center, and I'm very proud we were able to have a center for the people here in town."
Randle was a Fort Bend Heritage Society member and a member of the Fort Bend Home Demonstration Club, the Fort Bend Chamber of Commerce, the Fulshear/Simonton Lion's Club, and the Kendleton Heritage Society.
She was a member of the Greater Zachary Church in Fulshear from 1960 until she died. She was also president of the church choir.