Saint John Baptist Church
Wichita Falls, Wichita County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In June 1884, the Grainger & Ballow Addition was platted in an area later called the Eastside, which became the center of the African American community of Wichita Falls. In this neighborhood in November 1905, Rev. W.M. Massey, Charles and Susan Frizzell Craft, Andrew Byrd, William Johnson and Lizzie Scott Richardson organized Saint John Baptist Church, the third congregation of the Black community. Mrs. Richardson is credited for naming the church. The first service was held at Titus Chapel C.M.E. Church. The church soon moved to the Odd Fellows Hall and a building fund campaign was initiated. A small wood frame building was erected on Park Street in 1906, but unfortunately burned in June 1913 while pastor William Washington served. A brush arbor, used for worship, was erected on the same lot. Under Rev. M.K. Curry, a basement was built and by 1917 a two-story brick sanctuary was completed with the first baptistery of the Eastside area churches. A four-room house behind the church was bought as the first parsonage. Saint John became a spiritual and social center for the community. During the devastating Great Depression of the 1930s, Rev. Moses P. Timms and six other ministers of the Eastside Ministerial Alliance sponsored the feeding of approximately two hundred people per day with meals served in the basement of Saint John. Rev. Theodore Smith was influential in building the first Black church-owned recreational community park with a concession stand in 1947. Property was purchased at 1009 Flood Street to erect a new church, dedicated in August 1958. Rev. L.D. Bell's son was the architect. In 1967, the church mortgage was paid off and a new three thousand-square-foot parsonage was built. Saint John Baptist Church, more than a century old, still remains a vital part of the Eastside community of Wichita Falls. (2019)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized in 1905 in the Eastside neighborhood that had become the heart of Black Wichita Falls, Saint John Baptist Church grew from a small frame building — burned in 1913 and rebuilt — into a brick sanctuary and a center of community life. Through the Great Depression its basement fed some two hundred people a day, and its congregation later built one of the area's first Black-owned recreational parks and a new church home dedicated in 1958.
Why it matters
For more than a century Saint John shows how the Black church served as spiritual anchor, social safety net, and civic institution for a segregated Southern community.
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Related people
- · Rev. W.M. Massey
- · Lizzie Scott Richardson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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