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Hollis Brashear, a retired Army officer who helped lead the Dallas Independent School District through 14 years marked by racial animosity, died early Sunday. He was 81.
The former school board president had suffered from a heart condition in recent years, said his pastor, the Rev. Tony Evans at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, where Brashear was an elder. He died in his sleep at the rehabilitation center where he had been after a recent hospital stay.
“He was a tremendous example of responsibility, leadership and integrity,” Evans said.
Brashear, a civil engineer, was elected to the school board in 1992 after he beat four competitors in a race that was ultimately decided in a runoff.
His supporters, including Thomas G. Jones, the incumbent of the District 6 seat in southwest Dallas, said the board had needed a black male role model.
Brashear began commanding attention early in his tenure. In 1994, he angrily walked out of a meeting where the board was discussing a policy that would have tied principal evaluations to student test scores. The following year, he walked out again with three other minority trustees to protest what they viewed as attempts by the white school board president to stifle their influence.
About the same time, Dallas ISD went to court seeking to reduce federal oversight related to a decades-old order to desegregate its schools. Brashear challenged an expert who testified that a persistent achievement gap between white and minority students was due to differences in social and economic backgrounds.
“That may be something that the analysts and statisticians say, but I know in my heart we can do better,” he said.
Brashear, the grandson of a freed slave, had endured segregation himself. Born in 1935, he spent summers sweating in a cotton field to support his family in southern Dallas. He couldn’t go to the same public swimming pools as white children, nor to the same schools.
But at Lincoln High School, teacher Mamie McKnight recognized Brashear’s talent in math. She told The Dallas Morning News in 1998 that she pushed him to pursue engineering.
Brashear couldn’t afford college, so he asked the dean of the engineering school at Prairie View A&M University for a job to pay his tuition. He swept and mopped floors to earn a degree.
Years later, he snagged the presidency of the Dallas ISD board through a controversial vote in 1997 that ousted another trustee from the role.
His backers hoped he would restore order to a board that had become known for its relentless bickering and for having its meetings interrupted by the New Black Panther Party. But some trustees at the time cast Brashear’s presidency as a short-term political move meant to quell black protesters.
Board infighting continued under his watch, even as he tried to drown out the squabbles with the bang of his gavel.
Critics said he wasn’t aggressive enough, but some of his friends see it differently.
“He was the calm in the midst of the storm,” former trustee Ron Price said Sunday. “Back then there was a lot of upheaval, a lot of finger-pointing.”
Price attributed Brashear’s restrained leadership to his 21-year career in the Army, which took him to Korea and Vietnam and earned him two Bronze Stars.
He easily defeated his election opponents during his 14 years on the DISD board and served again as board president from 2003 to 2004.
Lew Blackburn, a current trustee who served with Brashear, said his focus was on black students and their success, especially in math and science.
When DISD revisited the desegregation order in 2002, Brashear joined the majority of the board in calling for it to be lifted as long as the district made certain promises. Among the commitments were maintaining the Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Center for high school magnet programs and keeping learning centers in South, West and East Dallas.
The board’s decision went against the wishes of some black community leaders.
“That was a very stressful, emotional time for him,” Price said.
Brashear stepped down from the board in 2006, telling his colleagues he wanted to spend more time with his wife and his engineering consulting firm.
But he also cited the growing discord between black and Hispanic trustees. They had argued over a policy requiring some principals to become bilingual, a decision to reduce spending for individual trustees’ pet projects and the choice of Michael Hinojosa for superintendent.
Since his retirement, Brashear was a caregiver to his wife, Minnie, before she died in 2014.
“To lose her was to lose part of his own life,” said Evans, the pastor.
Blackburn said he called and went to lunch with Brashear periodically, knowing he missed his wife.
“He was still interested in knowing what was going on, and he still had an interest in our students doing well,” Blackburn said.
Retirement didn’t stop Brashear from speaking out. He joined a commission in 2011 to help redraw the Dallas City Council’s district lines, talked to reporters about education issues and attended community meetings in southern Dallas.
Blackburn and Price, who are both black, credited Brashear with propelling their careers in public service. Price laughed at the memory of what he said Brashear told other people about him: “I put him under my wing, but he keeps flying out.”
Brashear is survived by two daughters, Enez Brashear and Teresa Brashear-Briscoe. Besides his wife, he was preceded in death by his brother Berlaind Brashear, the first black county criminal court judge in Dallas.
Funeral arrangements are: The Wake is Friday, February 10th from 6:30pm to 8pm at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, 1808 W. Camp Wisdom Road in Dallas. Services will be at 11am Saturday at the church, where Brashear was an elder.
