BISHOP CHARLES HARRISON MASON

Charles Harrison Mason was born in Shelby County, Tennessee, in 1864 to Jerry and Eliza Mason, both formerly enslaved. His father died in 1880 during a tuberculosis and yellow fever epidemic, and the family moved to Preston, Arkansas. He received a local preacher's license from Mount Gale Missionary Baptist Church in 1893 and attended Arkansas Baptist College for about three months. In 1897, he said, the name Church of God in Christ came to him in a vision in Little Rock. By 1961 the church reported more than 400,000 members; Mason died in Detroit that November.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mosaic Templars Cultural Center — steps away
  The state museum of African American history on the site of the Mosaic Templars of America headquarters, a Black fraternal order's 1913 building on West Ninth Street.
• Old State House Museum — 0.4 mi
  The oldest standing state capitol west of the Mississippi, where lawmakers met from 1836, enslaved people were auctioned in the east wing and Arkansas voted to secede.
• Arkansas State Capitol — 0.7 mi
  The neo-classical Capitol built from 1899 to 1915 on the old penitentiary site with state convict labor, free to enter, with the Little Rock Nine monument on the grounds.
• Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site — 1.1 mi
  The 1927 high school where nine Black students entered under federal troops on September 25, 1957, with a National Park Service visitor center across the intersection.

More markers nearby

• Pulaski County County Government — 0.5 mi
• Fort Steele — 0.6 mi
• The Arsenal Crisis — 0.8 mi
• The Camden Expedition — 0.8 mi