A philanthropic African American woman greatly improved Abilene’s minority neighborhoods. Eugenia Pickard was born in Georgia about 1877. She moved to Texas in the early 1900s and settled in Abilene. Here she owned several properties and made them available for no rent to poor families with children. She also provided places to play to African American children who had no public parks. When Pickard died in 1945, she left savings and property to the city of Abilene to be used for a new African American schoolhouse. The funds were insufficient, so instead the Eugenia Pickard Library was dedicated. Located within Abilene’s Carter G. Woodson High School, it served the surrounding community as an educational and social center.