Navarro's Healy Murphy Center Fundraising Page

The mission of Healy-Murphy Center is to provide compassionate service to opportunity youth by focusing on individualized education in a non-traditional setting, early childhood development and essential support services.

Our History

Healy-Murphy Center holds a unique place in the history of education not just in San Antonio but the entire state of Texas.  In 1888, Margaret Mary Healy Murphy, an Irish immigrant and widow, decided to use her own money to impact the lives of some of the state’s most underserved residents: African American children.  She used her personal funds to build St. Peter Claver Academy, the first privately funded school for African Americans in the state.  She also constructed a chapel on the campus which was the first Catholic parish for African Americans in the state.  Shortly after the school opened, Mrs. Murphy and her teachers were threatened by bigotry from members of the community including the Ku Klux Klan who objected to the school’s mission.  In response, she founded the Sisters of the Holy Ghost (now known as the Sisters of the Holy Spirit and Mary Immaculate) to run the school in 1893.  This was another historic first as the first Catholic community of religious women founded in Texas.

The Sisters of the Holy Spirit ran St. Peter Claver until 1970 when the mission was expanded to serve the needs of a new generation of underserved children: opportunity youth. Like Mother Margaret Mary Healy Murphy nearly a century early, Sr. Mary Boniface pioneered the right for all children to receive a free high quality education by creating Healy-Murphy Center, a non-profit learning center that provided the social and emotional support troubled teens needed to succeed in school and in life. Healy-Murphy Center’s holistic, individualized approach to education earned it the distinction of being the first accredited alternative education program in the state.