Bethel Baptist Church

The church's corner grew into a two-block Black neighborhood, and Booker T. Washington School taught first grade through high school in three rooms. Organizers say every Black student in Hidalgo County attended until integration in the 1960s. Eugene Hubbard, a World War I veteran who worked for the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad, and Williams bought the corner in 1943, after McAllen opened the Booker T. Washington Addition for Black buyers in 1941. The condemned building gave way to Bethel Garden, and the city made the site a landmark in 2016.

What the plaque says

Bethel Baptist Church In 1936, when Eugene and Georgia Hubbard found no churches for African Americans in McAllen, they established Little Bethel Baptist Church on the corner of Fresno and 18th Streets. It was named Little Bethel as Bethel is Hebrew for House of God. Rev. R.P. Allen was the first pastor, and Eugene Hubbard, Andy Williams and Will Earl Williams served as the first deacons. Despite the church's humble accommodations on Fresno Street, where there was no electricity or indoor plumbing, Little Bethel became the center of activities for African Americans of this area. In 1941, the church was renamed Bethel Baptist Church when they moved to this location, and built the new church themselves. (2015)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• La Lomita Chapel — 6.2 mi
  A small sandstone chapel on the Rio Grande levee, built by Oblate missionaries in 1865 and rebuilt at this site in 1899, the landmark that gave the city of Mission its name.
• Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park — 8.9 mi
  A 587-acre stand of Rio Grande woodland near Mission, once part of a Spanish porción, given to the state by the Bentsen family in 1944 and now headquarters of the World Birding Center.
• Museum of South Texas History — 9.0 mi
  Edinburg's regional museum, begun in 1967 in the 1910 Hidalgo County jail and now telling the Rio Grande's story from fossils and native peoples through steamboats to the 20th century.
• Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge — 9.9 mi
  About 2,000 acres of river forest on the Rio Grande's north bank, the surviving part of Benigno Leal's 1834 land grant, kept as a refuge since 1943 where two bird migration routes meet.

More markers nearby

• Floyd H. (Slats) Rodgers — 0.8 mi
• Campsite of the "Fighting 69th" — 0.8 mi
• Site of Casa de Palmas — 0.9 mi
• Archer Park — 0.9 mi