Dr. Anne Elizabeth Davis Roark
Wichita Falls, Wichita County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Following the local oil boom in 1918, the African American population in Wichita Falls increased as did the need for businesses and services. Dr. Anne Elizabeth Davis Roark was born in rural Texas in 1894 and educated at Paul Quinn College in Waco. She furthered her education by attending Schools of Chiropody (Podiatry) and Massage in Chicago. Dr. Roark opened a practice in Mineral Wells, but shortly moved to Wichita Falls with her husband, Daniel Henry Roark. Dr. Roark practiced Podiatry in Wichita Falls for nearly 60 years, opening her first office in 1923. Dr. Roark’s office from the 1920s to 1940s was located in the downtown area, serving white patrons, an unusual occurrence in the segregated community of Wichita Falls. Meanwhile, Dr. Roark and her husband were active in their east side community. During the 1940s, they operated the Roark Plaza Hotel and Coffee Shop, a site that served as a poll tax location and a waitress training site for African Americans. The Roarks were active in their church, Anderson Chapel A.M.E., and contributed to the local NAACP and church women united. After Daniel’s death, Dr. Roark continued their plans to open an African American theater, the Isis, on the east side of town. The theater brought in well-known African American artists and movies for the community. The theater was also used as the Negro Servicemen’s Service Center as there were no facilities at Sheppard Air Force Base for African American soldiers. In the face of adversity, Dr. Roark persevered to achieve her goals and to better the cultural environment of her community. Dr. Anne Roark passed in 1984 and is buried beside her husband in Lake View Cemetery. (2016)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When Wichita Falls' 1918 oil boom swelled its African American community, Dr. Anne Elizabeth Davis Roark answered the need for professional care, practicing podiatry downtown for nearly six decades after opening her first office in 1923. Remarkably for the Jim Crow era, her practice served white patrons even as she and her husband built Black institutions on the east side — a hotel and coffee shop that doubled as a poll-tax station and waitress-training site, and the Isis Theater that hosted Black artists and welcomed Black servicemen barred from facilities at Sheppard Air Force Base.
Why it matters
Roark's career shows how one determined Black professional could quietly cross segregation's color line while simultaneously nourishing the culture, enterprise, and political life of her own community.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Dr. Anne Elizabeth Davis Roark's Wichita Falls story begins with oil. The local boom of 1918 pulled people toward the city in large numbers, and among the newcomers was a growing African American population that needed businesses, services, and professional care of its own. Where people gather, an economy of care must rise to meet them — and Roark was one of the people who answered.
She arrived carrying an unusual education for a Black woman of her generation. Born in rural Texas in 1894, she studied at Paul Quinn College in Waco and then trained in Chicago in chiropody — what we now call podiatry — and in massage, before opening a practice in Mineral Wells and soon relocating to Wichita Falls with her husband, Daniel Henry Roark.
The town she settled in was thoroughly segregated, its public and commercial life divided by race in ways backed by both custom and law. That is the essential backdrop to her career: everything she accomplished, she accomplished inside a system built to keep her and her neighbors separate and subordinate.
People & events
Roark opened her first office in 1923 and practiced podiatry for nearly six decades — a career of remarkable length by any measure. From the 1920s into the 1940s her office stood in the downtown area and served white patrons, a genuinely unusual arrangement in a segregated community, and a quiet testament to the standing her skill earned her.
At the same time, she and Daniel poured themselves into building institutions on the east side. In the 1940s they ran the Roark Plaza Hotel and Coffee Shop, which did double and triple duty: as a poll-tax location and as a site for training African American waitresses. They were active in Anderson Chapel A.M.E. and supported the local NAACP and church women's organizations — knitting together the civic, political, and spiritual life of their community.
When Daniel died, Anne carried their shared plans forward, opening the Isis Theater on the east side. It brought well-known African American performers and films to the community, and it served as a service center for Black servicemen who had no facilities of their own at the nearby air base at Sheppard. She lived until 1984 and was buried beside her husband at Lake View Cemetery.
Its place in the American story
Roark's life illustrates a truth about the Jim Crow era that a simple map of the color line can miss: it was crossed constantly, in both directions, by people whose skill or determination made a place for them. A Black woman practicing a licensed medical trade downtown and serving white clients was, in her own quiet way, contradicting the whole logic of segregation.
The institutions she built tell the other half of the national story — the way Black communities under segregation created their own complete civic worlds because they were shut out of everyone else's. A hotel that was also a political站 and a training ground, a theater that was also a servicemen's center: these were self-reliant answers to systematic exclusion, repeated in Black neighborhoods across America.
One detail carries special national weight. That her hotel served as a poll-tax location speaks to the long fight for the ballot; Texas kept a poll tax that suppressed Black and poor voting until it fell in the 1960s, and making a place where people could pay it and register was a real act of political enablement. Roark's career braids together the histories of women's work, Black enterprise, and the struggle for full citizenship.
If you visit
Bring a sense of range to this marker, because the woman it honors had an extraordinary one. In a single life she was a trained medical professional, a downtown practitioner who crossed the color line, and a builder of hotels, a theater, and community institutions. Let the marker introduce you to all of her, not just one role.
Think about the buildings behind the words. A coffee shop where you could pay your poll tax and take a step toward the vote. A theater that welcomed the great Black performers of the day and opened its doors to soldiers the base would not house. These were places where a segregated community made its own culture and claimed its own dignity.
Standing on the east side of Wichita Falls, you are in the ground she spent almost sixty years serving and enriching. It is a rewarding stop for any traveler who wants the civil rights and women's history of America told through a single, tenacious life — proof that one determined person can hold open a door and, at the same time, build a whole house of her own behind it.
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
- · Anne Elizabeth Davis Roark
- · Daniel Henry Roark
Related events
- · Wichita Falls oil boom of 1918
Themes & tags
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