Italy Colored City Hall
Italy, Ellis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Frustrated by poor infrastructure, residents of an African American community in Italy called “the Hill” rallied to get a hearing with the city council in the mid-twentieth century. A group of African American men met in a small building on Poplar Street to discuss their impending meeting with the city council. The meeting between them and the all-white city council led to the establishment of the Italy Colored City Council around 1950. Elections for both city councils were held at the same time, and all citizens could vote on both ballots. In the first election for the Colored City Council, the people elected John Henry Farrow (1891-1959) as mayor, Nelton Tarrant (1913-1989) as secretary, and James “Jim” Hardeman (1885-1953), Matthew Sweatt (1882-1969), Walter Smith (1893-1961), Edd Lee Lewis (1900-1967), and William Costonia Jennings (1920-2009) as aldermen. A march 1951 issue of Ebony magazine featured the men in the article, “Texas’ first Negro Mayor.” Most, if not all, of the men elected to the council were descendants of enslaved people in Ellis County, illustrating the continued endurance of African Americans in Ellis County. The small wooden building with the sign “Colored City Hall” on the front was built in 1953 on Williams Street. The building served as a meeting place for African American council members and represented hope and progress for the Italy African American community. Despite the history of racial violence and segregation in Ellis County, the Italy Colored City Hall stands as a symbol of African American self-determination and political activism. (2017)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Frustrated by neglected streets and services, African American residents of the Italy neighborhood known as "the Hill" won a hearing with the city council and, around 1950, established their own Colored City Council, electing John Henry Farrow as mayor. Ebony magazine featured the men in 1951, and in 1953 they built a small frame "Colored City Hall" as their meeting place.
Why it matters
In the heart of the segregated South, Italy's Colored City Hall stands as a testament to African American self-government and the drive for a political voice denied by Jim Crow.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the mid-twentieth-century South, segregation was not just a set of signs — it was baked into where the pavement stopped, whose streets got fixed, and which neighborhoods the city bothered to serve. In the Ellis County town of Italy, Texas, the African American community known as "the Hill" lived with the daily consequences of that neglect: infrastructure that the town, run entirely by a white city council, was in no hurry to improve.
This was the era of Jim Crow, when Black citizens across the South were systematically shut out of the political processes that decided such things. Ellis County carried its own history of racial violence and segregation, and the ordinary machinery of local government simply was not built to answer to people like the residents of the Hill.
So the residents did something both modest and remarkable: rather than wait to be served, they organized to claim a voice of their own.
People & events
It began, as these things often do, in a small room. A group of African American men gathered in a little building on Poplar Street to plan how they would approach the all-white city council. That meeting led, around 1950, to something extraordinary — the establishment of the Italy Colored City Council, a parallel body elected by and for the Black community, with elections held at the same time as the regular council's and open to all citizens on both ballots.
In that first election the community chose John Henry Farrow (1891–1959) as mayor, with Nelton Tarrant (1913–1989) as secretary and a slate of aldermen — James "Jim" Hardeman, Matthew Sweatt, Walter Smith, Edd Lee Lewis, and William Costonia Jennings — carrying the community's business. Most, if not all, of these men were descendants of people who had been enslaved in Ellis County, which gives their election a weight that goes well beyond local politics.
The wider world noticed. A March 1951 issue of Ebony magazine featured the men under the headline "Texas' first Negro Mayor." And in 1953 the council gave itself a home: a small wooden building on Williams Street, with "Colored City Hall" lettered across the front — a meeting place, and a declaration that this community governed itself.
Its place in the American story
The story of Italy's Colored City Hall belongs to the long American struggle over who gets to hold power and how. Across the Jim Crow South, Black communities were denied a real share of formal political life, and the responses to that exclusion took many forms. Here the answer was to build a functioning, elected institution — self-government where the official channels offered so little.
That places this small Texas town within the broader current that would swell into the civil rights movement: the insistence that African Americans were full citizens entitled to a political voice, and the willingness to organize, elect, and lead in order to prove it. The men of the Hill did not wait for permission to practice self-determination.
The little frame building matters precisely because it was humble. Set against a regional history of violence and segregation, a plain wooden hall with a hand-lettered sign became a monument to endurance and hope — evidence that a community written out of the official story could still write itself back in.
If you visit
This is a place to slow down and read carefully. The scale is intentionally small — a modest frame building rather than a grand civic hall — and that modesty is the whole point. What you are looking at is a community's decision to govern itself when the wider town would not fully include it.
Stand there and picture the two things the marker describes: a handful of men crowded into a small room on Poplar Street, weighing how to face the council, and then a building of their own on Williams Street with its purpose painted plainly on the front. Between those two moments sits a quiet act of courage.
Italy makes a thoughtful stop on a route through Ellis County's small-town history, especially for travelers drawn to the American civil rights story in its everyday, local form — not the famous marches, but the ordinary neighbors who organized, voted, and built something lasting close to home.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · John Henry Farrow
- · Nelton Tarrant
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Peabody School
Hillsboro, TX
In 1885 Hillsboro issued a bond to build a school for African American children in the Black neighborhood known as Freetown, naming it for George Peabody, whose fund famously aided Southern education after the Civil War. A brick building replaced the original frame structure in 1919, and the school moved to this site in 1950. Its last class graduated in 1966 as full integration approached; though the building burned in 2005, Peabody School remains a point of community pride.
Saint James A.M.E. Church
Milford, TX
Organized in 1883 by the Rev. Joshua Goins, Sr., this congregation first gathered in a member's home and then an Odd Fellows' hall before erecting its own church in 1907. The finely crafted building blends Gothic Revival twin towers and a gabled facade with rounded Romanesque windows. It stands as Milford's oldest African-American church and church building.
Bessie Coleman
Waxahachie, TX
Born in Atlanta, Texas, in 1892, Bessie Coleman grew up in Waxahachie before moving to Chicago at 23 with a dream of flight. Barred by race and sex from American flight schools, she trained in France and earned her international pilot's license in 1921, returning home as the first Black woman pilot. "Queen Bess" thrilled integrated crowds as a barnstormer until her death in a 1926 air accident.
Joshua Chapel A.M.E. Church
Waxahachie, TX
Organized in 1876, this congregation took the name of its first pastor, the Rev. Joshua Goins, who planted African Methodist Episcopal churches across Texas. Worshipers met in an old schoolhouse until they raised this sanctuary in 1917, designed by the noted Black architect W. S. Pittman in the Romanesque Revival style. It has stood ever since as a landmark of Waxahachie's Black community.