Mt. Zion C. M. E. Church

🏛️The era

Mt. Zion Church was organized in 1874, in the middle of Reconstruction. Slavery had ended only a few years earlier, and in Texas, as across the South, African Americans were working to build lives in freedom despite violence, poverty, and fierce resistance to their new rights.

In those years, churches were among the most important institutions Black communities could build for themselves. A congregation offered worship, but it was also a meeting place, a source of mutual aid, a school for leaders, and a sign of independence. The marker notes that Mt. Zion gave spiritual help, outreach, and encouragement during a tumultuous era.

The church's denomination has its own Reconstruction story. The Colored Methodist Episcopal Church was formed in 1870 by Black Methodists who had belonged to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, giving them a church of their own to govern. Its name later became the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, but the C.M.E. initials carried on.

👥People & events

The church began with neighbors. Members from the Redland, Bethlehem, Prairie Creek, and Chandler communities gathered on Ephraim and Malinda Curtis's farm to organize Mt. Zion in 1874. Families from four separate settlements chose to build one congregation together.

The Rev. M. L. Ragsdale was its first pastor. In 1877, the Curtises deeded part of their land to the church trustees so a proper house of worship could be built. Owning land, and then giving some of it to their community, was a meaningful act for a family in those years.

The congregation kept growing. When more room was needed, Peter Hill provided land at this site for a larger building, which the marker connects with the pastorate of the Rev. L. E. Craig in the early 1890s. Over the decades, more facilities were added, and a third new sanctuary was finished in 1990.

Mt. Zion also raised leaders. A number of its members went on to become ordained ministers, carrying what they learned here to congregations elsewhere.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

Mt. Zion is part of one of the most important stories of Reconstruction: the founding of independent Black churches across the South. After emancipation, African Americans built congregations that they owned and led, and those churches became the backbone of community life for generations.

Those churches did much more than hold Sunday services. They supported families in hard times, trained leaders, and kept scattered rural communities connected. Mt. Zion's role as a focal point for Redland and its neighbors is an example of that larger pattern.

The church's long history matters as well. Many rural congregations founded in that era struggled to survive as populations shifted. For Mt. Zion to reach a third sanctuary more than a century after its founding shows how durable these communities, and the institutions they built, could be.

🧭If you visit

The marker is in the countryside near Ben Wheeler in Van Zandt County, East Texas, a region of rolling hills, pastures, and wooded back roads. The setting helps you picture the rural communities that came together to found this church.

As you stand here, remember that a working congregation, not a museum, carries on this story. Be respectful of the grounds and of anyone gathered for worship or fellowship.

Take a moment to think about the names on the marker: Ephraim and Malinda Curtis, who hosted the founding and gave land; Peter Hill, who gave the land for a larger building; and the pastors who led the church. Their choices built something that lasted well over a century.

If you are exploring the small towns and back roads of East Texas, this stop adds an important chapter: the story of African American communities who built their own institutions in the years right after slavery.