Sloan Memorial United Methodist Church
Houston, Harris County, Texas
Marker Inscription
One of the oldest Black Methodist churches in Houston, this congregation was started in 1880 by the Rev. Ed Roscoe, who served as the first pastor, with the assistance of the Rev. George Davis and the Rev. James Smith. The organizational meeting was held under a tent at this site. In 1881, church trustees Wash Breed, Robert Swiley, and Dick Thomas purchased the property from J. E. Foster, a local realtor. Since the land was located on Sloan Street, later renamed Sydnor, the original congregational name was Sloan Street Methodist Episcopal Church. The first sanctuary and parsonage were destroyed by fire in 1912. During construction of a new chapel, worship services were held in a frame building at the corner of Meadow and Nance. Additional facilities were completed during a 1950 building program. A significance force in the development of the local neighborhood since the 1880s, Sloan Memorial United Methodist Church has been active in community action programs. Members here have included several prominent business, professional, religious, and civic leaders of the area. (1981)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
One of the oldest Black Methodist churches in Houston, this congregation began in 1880 at an open-air meeting under a tent, led by the Rev. Ed Roscoe. The next year trustees Wash Breed, Robert Swiley, and Dick Thomas bought the property on Sloan Street—later Sydnor—giving the church its first name. Fire destroyed the original sanctuary in 1912, but the congregation rebuilt and, active in community programs, became a lasting force in the surrounding neighborhood.
Why it matters
Churches like Sloan Memorial were the organizing centers of African American community life and leadership in the post-Reconstruction South.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1880, Houston was a fast-growing railroad and commercial city, and its Black community was building a new world in the years after slavery. News of emancipation had reached Texas in June 1865, when Union troops at Galveston announced that enslaved people were free, the day now remembered as Juneteenth. In the fifteen years that followed, freedpeople across Texas worked to establish homes, schools, businesses, and above all churches of their own.
Those churches were more than places of worship. In a society that increasingly shut Black Texans out of political power and public institutions, especially as Reconstruction ended and segregation hardened, the church was one of the few spaces that Black communities owned and governed completely. Congregations raised money, bought land, ran schools and mutual aid efforts, and trained leaders.
Methodism had a strong presence among Black Texans after the Civil War. The name this congregation first chose, Sloan Street Methodist Episcopal Church, links it to the Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the national denominations that organized Black congregations in the South after emancipation. Over the next century, American Methodism went through mergers that eventually produced the United Methodist Church, which is why the church carries that name today.
People & events
This congregation began in the simplest possible way: a group of believers gathered under a tent on this spot in 1880. The Rev. Ed Roscoe led them as first pastor, with help from the Rev. George Davis and the Rev. James Smith. A tent meeting cost almost nothing and asked only that people show up, and that is how many of Houston's early Black churches got their start.
The next step was ownership. In 1881, church trustees Wash Breed, Robert Swiley, and Dick Thomas bought the land from J. E. Foster, a local realtor. It's worth pausing on that: within a generation of emancipation, Black men were acting as legal trustees and buying property for their community. The street out front was then called Sloan Street (later renamed Sydnor), and so the congregation took the name Sloan Street Methodist Episcopal Church, a name it still echoes as Sloan Memorial.
Disaster struck in 1912, when fire destroyed both the sanctuary and the parsonage. The congregation didn't scatter. While a new chapel went up, members worshiped in a frame building at the corner of Meadow and Nance. More building followed in a 1950 construction program. Through all of it, the marker notes, the church stayed active in community action programs and counted many of the area's business, professional, religious, and civic leaders among its members.
Its place in the American story
Sloan Memorial's story is part of one of the most important developments in American history: the independent Black church. After emancipation, African Americans across the South left the balconies and back rows of white-controlled churches and built their own congregations. Those churches became the backbone of Black community life, providing leadership, education, and organization at a time when almost every other door was closing.
The path of this congregation, from a tent meeting to a property purchase, through fire and rebuilding to decades of community work, reflects that larger pattern. Owning land and running their own institutions gave Black Americans a measure of independence that segregation could not easily touch. Churches like this one produced the ministers, teachers, and business and civic leaders who carried their communities forward, and in the twentieth century the Black church became a central force in the long struggle for civil rights.
Sloan Memorial also reflects the story of American Methodism, which grew enormously in the nineteenth century and reshaped itself through mergers into the United Methodist Church. A congregation that began as Methodist Episcopal in 1880 and endures as United Methodist today carries that whole institutional history in its name.
If you visit
Sloan Memorial stands in an older part of Houston, just east of downtown, and it remains a living place of worship. Treat your visit accordingly: it's a church first and a historic site second, so be respectful, especially during services.
As you stand near the marker, try to imagine the scene in 1880: a tent pitched on open ground, a small crowd gathering to organize a church from scratch. Then look at the street sign. Sydnor Street was once Sloan Street, and the church's name keeps that older identity alive, a small piece of Houston's past preserved in everyday language.
If you're exploring Houston's history, this stop pairs well with the city's many other sites related to African American heritage and Juneteenth. It's a good reminder that some of the most important history in a big city isn't in its grand public buildings but in neighborhood institutions like this one, built and sustained by the people who lived around them.
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
- · Ed Roscoe
- · George Davis
- · James Smith
Themes & tags
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