Terrell Heights
Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Platted in the late 1880s and developed around the city's streetcar systems in the early 1900s, the near southeast neighborhood known as Terrell Heights became the premier neighborhood for many African Americans. Virtually built out by 1951, the majority of the neighborhood was devoted to single-family development with a few apartment buildings and duplexes spread throughout the area.Many of the first occupants in this area were encouraged to purchase lots and build their own homes by local African American banker, William Madison "Gooseneck Bill" McDonald. Himself a resident of the neighborhood since circa 1911, McDonald bought lots in this area and sold them to African Americans. He then offered to finance the building of residences. Those who followed McDonald into the area included doctors, dentists, nurses, educators, religious leaders and laborers. Fellow resident Reverend A.W. Pryor was pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church (1924-1949). Dr. George D. Flemmings was a dentist and president of the Fort Worth-Tarrant County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He was president circa 1937-1975 during the desegregation clashes in Fort Worth and assisted other nearby communities. Mrs. Lucille Smith was the first African American woman to be a member of the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce. Social institutions were formed with the neighborhood's best interests at heart as well as several commercial establishments and churches. The first theater in Fort Worth to be built specifically for African Americans, the Grand Theater, opened in 1938 with the newest and best equipment. Though change has occurred through the years, the neighborhood's families have established a tight-knit community bound together by a common history. (2017)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Platted in the late 1880s and knit together by early streetcar lines, Terrell Heights became one of Fort Worth's premier African American neighborhoods. Banker William Madison "Gooseneck Bill" McDonald bought lots here and financed homes for Black families—doctors, dentists, educators, ministers, and laborers among them. Residents like NAACP leader Dr. George D. Flemmings and businesswoman Lucille Smith made the neighborhood a center of Black civic and professional life through the desegregation era.
Why it matters
In an age of restrictive covenants, Terrell Heights shows how Black communities built self-sustaining neighborhoods and organized leadership that would drive the fight against segregation.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Terrell Heights was platted in the late 1880s, in the years when Fort Worth was growing fast and its residents were spreading into new neighborhoods just beyond the old core. What truly shaped this near-southeast community, though, was the streetcar.
In the early 1900s, streetcar lines knit American cities together and made whole neighborhoods possible — people could live a bit farther out and still ride to work, church, and shopping. Terrell Heights grew up around those lines, and by 1951 it was virtually built out, mostly with single-family homes and a scattering of apartments and duplexes.
All of this took shape in an era of rigid segregation. Across the country, Jim Crow custom and restrictive covenants dictated where Black families could live, work, and gather. Within those hard limits, African American communities built neighborhoods of their own — and Terrell Heights became one of the finest in Fort Worth, the premier neighborhood for many of the city's Black residents.
People & events
At the heart of the neighborhood's rise was William Madison "Gooseneck Bill" McDonald, a local African American banker who had lived in the area since about 1911. McDonald bought lots here and sold them to Black families — and then went a step further, offering to finance the building of their homes. In a time when Black homebuyers were routinely shut out of credit, that was more than business; it was a way of building a community into being.
Those who followed him made the neighborhood a gathering place for Black achievement and leadership: doctors, dentists, nurses, educators, ministers, and working people side by side. Reverend A.W. Pryor pastored Mount Zion Baptist Church from 1924 to 1949. Dr. George D. Flemmings, a dentist, led the Fort Worth–Tarrant County branch of the NAACP for nearly four decades — roughly 1937 to 1975 — through the hard years of the desegregation fight, and lent his help to other communities as well. Mrs. Lucille Smith became the first African American woman to join the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce.
The neighborhood grew its own institutions to match. Churches, social organizations, and commercial establishments took root, all with the community's interests at heart. In 1938 the Grand Theater opened — the first theater in Fort Worth built specifically for African Americans, and outfitted with the newest and best equipment of its day. Change has come over the years, but the families here remained a tight-knit community bound by a shared history.
Its place in the American story
Terrell Heights tells a story that unfolded in Black communities across America in the first half of the twentieth century. Locked out of much of the housing market by restrictive covenants and segregation, African Americans built self-sustaining neighborhoods — complete with their own banks, churches, schools, businesses, and places of entertainment.
That self-reliance was not merely defensive; it was generative. A banker like McDonald financing homes, a theater built to welcome Black audiences, a chamber of commerce barrier broken — these were acts of community-building that created wealth, dignity, and institutions where the wider society offered none.
And those same neighborhoods incubated the leadership that would drive the fight against segregation itself. A local NAACP branch president guiding his community through the desegregation clashes of the mid-century South is the living link between a place like this and the national civil rights movement. The struggle for equality was won not only in Washington and the great marches, but in neighborhoods exactly like Terrell Heights.
If you visit
Read this marker as a portrait of a whole community, not a single building. As you look around, picture a neighborhood that was, within living memory, home to a striking concentration of Black professional and civic life — the doctors and dentists, the ministers and teachers, the businesspeople who chose to build here.
Think about the ordinary heroism baked into these streets: families encouraged to buy their own lots and build their own homes at a time when that was made deliberately hard, and neighbors who turned a subdivision into an institution-rich community. The names on the marker — McDonald, Flemmings, Smith, Pryor — are worth carrying with you as you go.
For a traveler interested in African American history and the roots of the civil rights era, this is a rewarding stop: proof that the movement grew out of real neighborhoods with banks, churches, and a theater of their own. The 2017 marker is recent, a sign of a community determined that its history be seen and remembered. Give it the time you'd give any place where a people built something lasting against the odds.
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
- · William Madison "Gooseneck Bill" McDonald
- · George D. Flemmings
- · Lucille Smith
- · A.W. Pryor
Themes & tags
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