Salem United Methodist Church
Orange, Orange County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Six months after the news of emancipation reached Texas in 1865, the Louisiana-Texas-Mississippi Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church for African Americans, known as the Mississippi Mission Conference, was organized on Christmas Day. In 1868, its mission at Orange began to host worship services. Baptist minister Arthur Robinson led the mission and was succeeded by the Rev. Joseph Hardin, a circuit rider from Galveston, the following year. The name Salem Methodist Episcopal Church was formally adopted when the mission became a full church in 1873. Church trustees acquired property and constructed a small frame building in 1877. For several years beginning in 1883, students of the African American School at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church attended classes in the Salem Church Building. As the congregation grew, trustees acquired additional land, and by 1923 brick was added to a second frame building. The sixtieth session of the Texas annual conference was held at Salem Methodist Episcopal Church in 1925. The church grew steadily throughout the 20th century and maintained an active role in the daily lives of the African American citizens of Orange. During the World War II population increase, elementary school classes were held in the Salem Church Building. Members of the church have been community and state leaders, including political and civil rights activists, ministers, educators, a vice president of the Texas National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the first black and first female mayor of the city of Orange. The Salem United Methodist Church continues in the traditions of its founders with programs of service and worship. (2000)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Six months after emancipation reached Texas in 1865, Black Methodists organized a mission conference on Christmas Day, and by 1868 its Orange mission was holding worship services. Formally named Salem Methodist Episcopal Church in 1873, the congregation built a frame church, hosted classes for African American schoolchildren, and grew steadily through the twentieth century. Its members became community leaders — ministers, educators, civil rights activists, an NAACP vice president, and the first Black and first female mayor of Orange.
Why it matters
Founded in freedom's first months, the church became a cornerstone of African American life and civil rights leadership in southeast Texas.
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Related people
- · Arthur Robinson
- · Joseph Hardin
Related events
- · Emancipation
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Black Education in Orange County
Orange, TX
As early as the 1870s, Orange County's Black families held school in churches and private homes, and by 1887 dedicated schools appeared in the Duncan Woods community and in Orange itself. The Orange Colored School was later renamed to honor educator Robert Russa Moton and again for longtime principal Emma H. Wallace. By 1960 the community supported additional schools including Franklin Elementary and North Junior High.
Black Education in Orange County
Orange, TX
African American education in Orange County began in the 1870s in private homes and churches, then took root in schoolhouses like Duncan Woods No. 3 and the Orange Colored School after the county organized its districts in 1887. Under a succession of dedicated teachers and principals, the city school grew into Moton Elementary and High School, renamed for Tuskegee's Robert Russa Moton and later for local educator Emma Henderson Wallace, and celebrated for its campus, sports, and band. The system served hundreds of students and kept building new facilities right up to integration in 1966.
St. Therese Catholic Church
Orange, TX
St. Therese parish grew out of the missionary work of the Josephite society, which ministered to African American Catholics. In 1924 a Josephite priest said mass for three Black families in Orange and saw promise in the community, and for a dozen years priests held services in homes and borrowed spaces. A Boston benefactor funded a church building dedicated in 1936 to St. Therese, patron of Catholic missions, and the parish flourished as Orange's shipbuilding boom swelled the town during World War II, adding a school and parish hall by 1945.
Emma Henderson Wallace
Orange, TX
Born in Waxahachie in 1876 and trained at Prairie View College, Emma Henderson Wallace came to Orange in 1901 as one of four teachers at the Orange Colored School, which met inside local Black churches. She joined the public school faculty in 1914 and in 1933 became principal of Moton High School, building up its library, athletic courts, band, choir, and student clubs over thirteen years. In 1946 the school was renamed Emma H. Wallace High School in her honor, a lasting tribute to a career devoted to educating Orange's African American youth.