David Sutton Meredith
Longview, Gregg County, Texas
Marker Inscription
DAVID SUTTON MEREDITH WAS BORN ON FEBRUARY 2, 1869 IN BRUNSWICK COUNTY, VIRGINIA. MEREDITH CAME TO RUSK COUNTY, TEXAS IN 1891 AND MARRIED MINNIE BURR FISHER, A NATIVE OF BERLIN, TENNESSEE. THEY MOVED TO LONGVIEW IN 1895. IN NOVEMBER 1916, MEREDITH WAS ELECTED SHERIFF OF GREGG COUNTY AND SERVED UNTIL 1921 WHEN HE DID NOT SEEK RE-ELECTION. HE HELPED QUELL POTENTIAL RACE RIOTS DURING THE TUMULTUOUS LONGVIEW RED SUMMER OF 1919. AFTER LEAVING OFFICE, MEREDITH CONTINUED TO PLAY AN INFLUENTIAL ROLE IN THE COMMUNITY AND WAS INVOLVED IN THE ORGANIZATION OF THE REMBERT NATIONAL BANK AND THE LONGVIEW NATIONAL BANK. HE PASSED AWAY ON MARCH 14, 1934 AND IS BURIED ALONG WITH HIS FAMILY.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born in Virginia in 1869, David Sutton Meredith settled in Longview in 1895 and was elected sheriff of Gregg County in 1916. He served through the volatile summer of 1919, when he helped keep racial violence from erupting into full-scale riot during Longview's chapter of the nationwide "Red Summer." After leaving office he remained an influential figure, helping organize two of the city's national banks.
Why it matters
Meredith's tenure touches one of 1919's Red Summer flashpoints, when a wave of white-on-Black violence swept American cities and tested every local official's response.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Longview came of age in the decades after the Civil War as an East Texas railroad and cotton town, a place where Black and white residents lived and worked side by side under the hard rules of the Jim Crow South. Opportunity for African Americans was real but circumscribed, and the promise of a new life drew families across state lines into the piney woods of Gregg County.
Into this world came a man born in Virginia in 1869 who reached Rusk County, Texas, in 1891 and settled in Longview a few years later. He arrived in a rapidly growing town where a person of drive and standing could build something — a household, a business, a reputation — even as the broader society kept a firm hand on how far that standing was allowed to reach.
The summer of 1919, when this marker's subject was sheriff, fell in one of the most volatile years in American race relations. Soldiers were home from the World War, cities were crowded and tense, and violence flared in town after town — a season so bloody it earned a grim nickname.
People & events
David Sutton Meredith was born in Brunswick County, Virginia, on February 2, 1869, came to Rusk County in 1891, and married Minnie Burr Fisher, a Tennessee native. The couple moved to Longview in 1895, and in November 1916 Meredith was elected sheriff of Gregg County, an office he held until he chose not to seek re-election in 1921.
His tenure carried him straight into the Longview troubles of the summer of 1919. Racial violence broke out in the town that season, part of a wave sweeping the nation, and it fell to local authorities to keep the situation from spiraling further. The marker credits Meredith with helping to quell the danger of full-scale rioting — a role that placed him at the center of one of the most fraught moments in the county's history.
After he left office, Meredith remained a figure of influence, taking part in organizing two local institutions, the Rembert National Bank and the Longview National Bank. He died on March 14, 1934, and is buried with his family — a life that began in Reconstruction-era Virginia and ended as a respected Longview citizen.
Its place in the American story
The events of 1919 that touched Longview were not isolated. That summer saw an eruption of white-on-Black violence in communities across the United States, a period so severe it became known as the Red Summer. In city after city, tensions that had built for years boiled over, and the response of local officials often meant the difference between disorder contained and disorder unleashed.
Longview's chapter belongs to that national story. To read this marker is to be reminded that the great, painful currents of American history — the aftermath of war, the migrations of a people seeking better lives, the violence that met their aspirations — ran directly through ordinary Texas towns, and that the men holding local office were tested by forces far larger than any county.
The historical record of such moments is often complicated, and honest history resists tidy heroes and villains. What endures here is the fact that a local official's choices, in a summer when so much went wrong across the country, mattered to the people whose safety hung in the balance.
If you visit
Longview today is a busy East Texas city, and pausing at this marker asks you to slow down and imagine the same streets in a summer more than a century ago, when the whole town held its breath. The quiet of the present makes the weight of 1919 easier to feel, not harder.
Take a moment with the arc of the life the marker records — Virginia to Rusk County to Longview, a marriage, an elected office, and a role in local banking. It is the shape of a full citizen's life lived inside the tight constraints of its era, and it rewards a reader willing to sit with both the achievement and the difficulty.
As you travel through this corner of Texas, let the marker anchor a larger reflection on the Red Summer and the year that produced it. History like this is not always comfortable, and that is precisely why it is worth stopping for.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · David Sutton Meredith
- · Minnie Burr Fisher
Related events
- · Longview Red Summer of 1919
Themes & tags
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