New Hope Baptist Church
Lubbock, Lubbock County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Originally known as Mount Calvary Baptist, the historically African American New Hope Baptist Church organized in 1926 at 18th street and Avenue B, following a split from Caldonia Baptist Church. Under the tenure of Rev. G. H. Washington, the church moved to east 20th street and Birch Avenue (formerly called East Avenue B) in 1929. The church’s name may have changed to New Hope Baptist church at the time of the move, though the new name did not appear in newspapers until 1933. Over the years, the church has continually seen many building improvements and growth. During Rev. Richard E. Jones’ tenure, the New Zeal Baptist Association was formed and for many years several new hope preachers served as its moderator. In the 1930s and 1940s, the church figured prominently in community activities such as Juneteenth and Armistice Day. The church hosted the Junior Welfare League Baby Clinic to help provide health services for young children. Under the leadership of Rev. S. M. Meters, the current church sanctuary was built in 1949, which the congregation proudly celebrated. Rev. A. L. Dunn served for 29 years (1952-1981), spearheading additional improvements, including an educational building in 1957 and a new parsonage. He also served for several years as moderator of the west Texas association. New Hope is greatly involved in its community, initiating many outreach programs such as the Deacon Family Ministry Plan and means for care. The church also purchased a radio transmitter and has been broadcasting the morning worship services and the “New Hope Gospel Time” on Sunday evenings for over 30 years. Today, New Hope Baptist remains an active and vibrant congregation, “a church where people care.”
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born from a 1926 split with Caldonia Baptist Church, this historically African American congregation began as Mount Calvary Baptist before taking the New Hope name around the time it moved to a new home in 1929. Through the 1930s and 1940s it stood at the center of Black community life in Lubbock, hosting Juneteenth and Armistice Day observances and a baby clinic for young children. Long-serving pastors built out its sanctuary and educational buildings, and its radio broadcasts have carried worship into local homes for decades.
Why it matters
African American churches were the organizing heart of Black community life under segregation, providing worship, education, health care, and civic gathering all under one roof.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
New Hope Baptist Church took shape in a Texas defined by legal segregation. In the 1920s and for decades after, Black Americans in cities like Lubbock lived under Jim Crow — separate schools, separate services, and daily exclusion from much of white civic life. In that world, the Black church was far more than a place of Sunday worship; it was the one institution a community fully owned and controlled.
The congregation's early decades — the 1920s through the 1940s — spanned the tail of the Progressive era, the Great Depression, and the Second World War. These were years of hardship and movement, when African American families across the South and Southwest built and rebuilt their own networks of mutual aid because the wider society offered them so little.
Lubbock itself was still a young and growing city on the South Plains during these years, and its Black neighborhoods were establishing the churches, businesses, and associations that would sustain community life for generations.
People & events
The church was born in 1926 out of a split from Caldonia Baptist Church, beginning life as Mount Calvary Baptist at 18th Street and Avenue B. Under Rev. G. H. Washington it moved in 1929 to a new home on East 20th Street and Birch Avenue. The New Hope name appears to have come with that move, though it does not turn up in the newspapers until 1933.
From there the congregation became a hub of Black community life. In the 1930s and 1940s it figured prominently in Juneteenth and Armistice Day observances, and it hosted the Junior Welfare League Baby Clinic, bringing health services to young children who had few other options. Under Rev. Richard E. Jones the New Zeal Baptist Association was formed, and New Hope pastors would serve as its moderator for years — a sign of the congregation's reach beyond its own walls.
The building itself grew with the people. Rev. S. M. Meters oversaw construction of the current sanctuary in 1949, a milestone the congregation celebrated with pride. Rev. A. L. Dunn then served for twenty-nine years, from 1952 to 1981, adding an educational building in 1957 and a new parsonage, and serving as moderator of the West Texas association. In the decades since, outreach ministries like the Deacon Family Ministry Plan — and a long-running radio broadcast, including a Sunday-evening "New Hope Gospel Time" carried for over thirty years — have kept the church's voice in local homes. It remains, in its own words, "a church where people care."
Its place in the American story
New Hope's story is the story of the Black church in America written small. Under segregation, congregations like this one carried a civic weight that went far beyond religion: they served as schoolhouse, clinic, meeting hall, and social safety net all at once. The baby clinic hosted here is a perfect example — health care delivered through the church because the wider system would not deliver it otherwise.
The public celebrations the church anchored also matter. Juneteenth marks the day in 1865 when word of emancipation finally reached enslaved Texans, and it was Black communities — often through their churches — that kept that memory alive long before the wider nation took notice. A congregation that made Juneteenth a centerpiece was helping preserve one of the most important dates in American history.
Finally, the church's associations and long-tenured pastors show how Black religious networks knit far-flung communities together across Texas. A local congregation that produces the moderator of a regional association is exercising leadership that reaches well past its own neighborhood — the kind of self-organized institution-building that defined African American life in the segregation era.
If you visit
Look first at the 1949 sanctuary. A congregation that had already moved and grown chose, in the years after World War II, to build something permanent and dignified — and celebrated it proudly. That building is the physical expression of decades of pooled effort, and it rewards a moment of quiet attention.
If you're able to visit on a Sunday, you may still catch the tradition that has carried this church's worship beyond its walls for more than thirty years: the radio broadcast. Few historic markers point to a congregation whose living voice you can literally tune into, and that continuity — past flowing into present — is the heart of what this place is.
Set against the surrounding neighborhood, the church helps you read Lubbock's history in a fuller way. This was a center of Black community life through the hardest decades of segregation, and standing here places you at one of the anchor points around which that community organized itself, celebrated its freedom, and cared for its own.
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
- · Rev. G. H. Washington
- · Rev. A. L. Dunn
Themes & tags
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