Red Oak Missionary Baptist Church
Longview, Gregg County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1875, a group of freed African Americans founded a church south of the Longview townsite. Sallie Rollins donated land for Red Oak Grove Baptist Church, and Rev. Rube Wright was the first pastor. The original site was near current Eastman Road and Interstate 20, adjacent to Swanzcey Cemetery. In 1926-27, the church moved to its current site on land bought from the Jacobs and Rollins families. About that time, “grove” was dropped from the name. Members were actively involved with Butler College in Tyler and continue to encourage and influence young people through scholarships. The church’s service and mission work has had a significant impact on the community and the region.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1875, a decade after emancipation, freed African Americans south of Longview organized Red Oak Grove Baptist Church on land donated by Sallie Rollins, with Rev. Rube Wright as their first pastor. The congregation later moved to its present site and dropped 'grove' from its name, all the while investing in education through ties to Butler College in Tyler and student scholarships. Its mission work has shaped the surrounding community for nearly a century and a half.
Why it matters
Freedpeople's churches like Red Oak turned faith into infrastructure, seeding schools and scholarships that opened doors education had long been denied to Black Southerners.
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Related people
- · Sallie Rollins
- · Rube Wright
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Longview Womack High School
Longview, TX
Opened in 1930 on Gum Street as the Longview Negro High School, this campus gave African American students a secondary education in the era of legal segregation. Rebuilt after a 1946 fire and later renamed for beloved teacher Mary C. Womack, it produced graduates guided by principals honored in the East Texas Black Educators Hall of Fame. A federal desegregation order finally closed and razed the school.
Pleasant Green Baptist Church
Longview, TX
After emancipation, freedpeople established the community of Pleasant Green, and in December 1871 pastors Henry Moses and Charles Anderson helped local residents organize a Baptist congregation, with the Rev. Henry Mass as its first pastor. From a small farm the church moved to this site in 1884 on land deeded by Simon and Mealy Claiborn, raising a frame sanctuary and later a larger house of worship. It remains a center of the historic African American community.
Pleasant Hill Baptist Church
Hallsville, TX
Within months of learning of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865, newly freed families began settling this Harrison County community. Led by Brother Ned Jacobs, they held prayer meetings in one another's homes, and in 1871 formally organized Pleasant Hill Baptist Church under a brush arbor with the Rev. George Pritchett as pastor. With no other public gathering place, the church doubled as a schoolhouse for reading and writing lessons and a hall for economic and political meetings.
Kilgore Colored and C. B. Dansby Schools
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African American education in Kilgore reached back to 1873 and its Baptist church, but in 1935 the school district built a substantial brick campus here for Black students under segregation. For nearly twenty-five years principal C. B. Dansby grew it from six grades to twelve, and the school was renamed in his honor after he died during a graduation ceremony. Dansby High served the community until Kilgore's schools finally desegregated in 1970.