Wiley College Cemetery
Marshall, Harrison County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, North, an organization devoted to the education of former slaves and their descendants, established Wiley College in Marshall in March 1873. The school was named for Bishop Isaac W. Wiley, a charter member of the society, and was originally located about three miles south of the town square. The college moved to its present location in 1877. A four-acre plot of the college property was set aside as a burial ground for the Black community, and has been known through the years as both Wiley College Cemetery and Wiley University Cemetery. The earliest documented graves here are those of Oscar Laurin Coffin (March 11 - May 15, 1894) and his mother, Minnie May Coffin (d. June 17, 1894). Other members of the community buried here include the Rev. Matthew Dogan (1863-1947), president of Wiley College from 1896 to 1942; respected schoolteacher Effie Mitchell; educators Henry and Gertrude H. Mason; and veterans of the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. The cemetery also contains a large number of unmarked graves. The Wiley College Cemetery Club, organized in 1959, maintains the historic graveyard. (1989)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Methodist Episcopal Church's Freedmen's Aid Society founded Wiley College in Marshall in 1873 to educate former slaves and their descendants, and set aside four acres of its grounds as a burial place for the Black community. The earliest documented graves date to 1894, and those laid to rest include longtime college president Matthew Dogan, respected teachers, and veterans of the Civil War through the Korean War. Many graves remain unmarked, and a cemetery club has tended the grounds since 1959.
Why it matters
The cemetery of one of the oldest historically Black colleges west of the Mississippi holds the generations who built Black education and community in East Texas.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
H. B. Pemberton
Marshall, TX
Henry Bertram Pemberton, born in 1867, became the first college graduate of Wiley College in Marshall and devoted his life to Black education in a segregated Texas. Named principal of the Colored School in 1894 and given permission but no money for a new building, he borrowed on his own credit to raise a two-story schoolhouse that his community repaid. Over decades he expanded Marshall's Black schools, recruited qualified teachers, and helped charter the local NAACP; in 1940 thousands of petitioners had the high school he founded renamed in his honor.
James Leonard Farmer, Sr.
Marshall, TX
James Leonard Farmer, Sr. earned a doctorate from Boston University in 1918 and became a Methodist minister and scholar of philosophy and religion, teaching at Wiley College and other historically Black institutions across the South. A popular speaker and author, he pastored churches in Marshall, Texarkana, and Galveston. His son, James Farmer, Jr., grew up to found the Congress of Racial Equality and lead the civil rights movement.
Melvin B. Tolson
Marshall, TX
Poet and professor Melvin B. Tolson taught at Wiley College from 1924 to 1947, where he built an award-winning debate team that packed venues and famously bested national champion USC in 1935. His students included future civil rights leaders James L. Farmer, Jr., Fred Lewis, and Heman Sweatt. A celebrated writer whose newspaper column chronicled African American life, Tolson later taught at Langston University and even served as the Oklahoma town's mayor.
Matthew W. Dogan, Sr.
Marshall, TX
Born in 1863 to enslaved parents who purchased their family's freedom, Matthew W. Dogan was valedictorian at Rust College before becoming a mathematician and, in 1896, the second African American president of Wiley College. Over nearly five decades he built thirteen campus buildings, doubled enrollment, secured a Carnegie Library erected by student labor, and raised a substantial endowment. He shielded students and faculty in a segregated community until his 1942 retirement, and is buried in Wiley Cemetery.