Site of McKnight Plaza
Palestine, Anderson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
James B. McKnight moved to Anderson County in 1848. In 1876 and 1879, he bought land at this site from J.H. Mead. Here, he operated a saddlery and farrier business. McKnight died in 1907, and in 1910, the property was sold to the Farmers and Citizens Bank, which had been established by African American businessmen in 1906. The block here became known as McKnight Plaza. Between 1910 and 1945, McKnight Plaza housed numerous businesses and offices owned by African American merchants, doctors and dentists. The Farmers and Citizens Bank, which would close in the late 1920s, was on a prominent corner of the ground floor. George Macon Shuffer owned a dry good store. Dr. H.V. Hurd, a dentist, and Dr. J.H. Dodd owned a drugstore and soda fountain; Dodd's wife operated a millinery shop. Other businesses included J.B. Blake's cab company, John Tatum's café, H.G. Neely's accounting and insurance office, the funeral home of Al Davis and I.V. Bland, John Hunter's barbershop, and Noah Williams' cleaning and pressing shop. Doctors W.R. Roberts, R.E. Holland and H.D. Patton, as well as dentists Williamson McLellan and H.D. Mitchell, had offices and tended patients at this site. The Missouri Pacific Colored Booster Club, a private social organization located here, sponsored local events and dances. For 35 years, McKnight Plaza served as a commercial center for Palestine's African American community, representing local entrepreneurship and enterprise. Commonly referred to as "on the square," the plaza was once a bustling shopping and office center. Following the building's demolition in 1945, the plaza's former site became a grocery store and later a bank. Today, it remains a significant part of Palestine's social and economic history. (2004)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
After James B. McKnight ran a saddlery and farrier shop on this Palestine block in the late 1800s, the property passed in 1910 to the Farmers and Citizens Bank, founded by African American businessmen in 1906. For the next 35 years the block—known as McKnight Plaza and fondly called "on the square"—thrived as the commercial heart of Palestine's Black community, packed with the offices of doctors, dentists, druggists, cafés, barbers, and a funeral home. Its social life centered on the Missouri Pacific Colored Booster Club, which sponsored dances and events until the building was razed in 1945.
Why it matters
McKnight Plaza is a vivid record of Black entrepreneurship and self-reliance in the Jim Crow South, where a segregated community built its own thriving marketplace of professionals and merchants.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · James B. McKnight
- · George Macon Shuffer
- · Al Davis
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Little Flock Cemetery
Jewett, TX
Little Flock Baptist Church took root in this corner of Leon County in 1854, and by 1860 its churchyard had become a burial ground for the pioneer families—Baldwin, Lamb, Shipp, Thomas and others—who farmed the surrounding land. When the Bear Grass Coal Company opened two mines here between 1907 and the early 1920s, new families arrived, including African American and Hispanic miners now resting in unmarked graves. Veterans of the Civil War and both World Wars, preachers, landowners, and even a beloved fiddler named Tom Foley lie together in this ground.
Wortham Schools
Wortham, TX
Education in Wortham began in the 1870s as a cooperative effort of the Masonic Lodge and the Methodist church, with ministers teaching from donated books, before the first public school opened in 1883. In 1891 Wortham became the first independent school district in Freestone County, and the discovery of oil in 1924 transformed a town of 1,000 into a boomtown of 20,000 nearly overnight — swelling one classroom from 18 pupils to 84 in just four days. The system grew by absorbing rural schools and, in 1966, merged the F. W. Wheeler School for Black students into a single district.
Civilian Conservation Corps at Fort Parker State Park
Groesbeck, TX
In August 1935, an all–African American unit, Civilian Conservation Corps Company 3807(C), began building a state park on the former town site of Springfield. Over nearly seven years the company cleared roads, poured a dam that created Lake Fort Parker, built picnic areas and a bathhouse, and reconstructed old Fort Parker in time for the 1936 Texas Centennial. Former Governor Pat Neff dedicated the finished park in 1941, and the company moved on in 1942 after a remarkable run of complex work.
Don Hastings
Palestine, TX
A 1954 Palestine High graduate, Don Hastings caught the knifemaking bug when a Hollywood film about Jim Bowie sparked a craze in his high-school metal shop. He mastered first the stock-removal method and then, after meeting bladesmith Bill Moran in 1972, the ancient art of forging Damascus steel — a technique then practiced by only a handful of people worldwide. A co-founder of the American Bladesmith Society, he earned its mastersmith rank in 1981 and helped launch a bladesmithing school before his death in 1986.