Bishop College

Accreditation and money shaped Bishop's later decades. The Handbook of Texas says the Southern Association rated the college Class B in 1931 and Class A in 1948, that a junior college branch opened in Dallas in 1947, and that the Hoblitzelle Foundation gave 98 acres in south Dallas in 1957. In 1970 the American Association of University Professors listed the college after a professor's firing and related student arrests. The Southern Association revoked its accreditation in December 1986, Bishop filed for Chapter 11 in April 1987, and the college closed in 1988. Paul Quinn College later occupied the grounds.

What the plaque says

Bishop College Founded by the Baptist Home Mission Society in 1881, Bishop College became the second historically Black college in Marshall. Nathan Bishop, a New York native and superintendent of several Northeastern school systems, his wife, Caroline Caldwell Bishop, and several local Baptist ministers combined their funds to begin the college. Throughout its existence, Bishop College offered instruction in 22 disciplines including literature, science, art and religion, In 1925, the school began a two-year ministerial training program, which was later renamed to honor its first African American president, Joseph J. Rhoads. In athletics, Bishop College achieved championships in the Southwest Athletic Conference and later in the Gulf Coast Athletic Conference. In 1960, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the commencement ceremony at Bishop College and during the 1960s Civil Rights era, Bishop College students participated in sit-ins at local Marshall restaurants. The 1960s also marked the relocation of the Bishop College campus from Marshall to Dallas. With the 1960s demolition of Bishop College's Administration Building and former Holcomb family home on the Wyalucing Plantation, all traces of Bishop College in Marshall slowly disappeared. Notable alumni include professional athletes, politicians and ministers. Although Bishop College officially closed its doors in 1988, Bishop College's legacy stands as testament to the success and perseverance of African American institutions of higher learning. (2018)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Starr Family Home State Historic Site — 0.7 mi
  Maplecroft, the 1871 Greek Revival house Frank Starr built in Marshall, with Ruth Starr Blake's glass and china, an 1880s kitchen restored in 2019 and a retirement home built for a formerly enslaved person.
• Texas and Pacific Railway Depot and Museum — 0.8 mi
  The only surviving building of the Texas and Pacific shops at Marshall, a 1912 Mission Revival depot saved from demolition in the 1990s, still an Amtrak stop, with a railway museum and a Mikado locomotive.
• Harrison County Historical Museum — 0.9 mi
  Galleries in Marshall's 1901 courthouse that run from the Caddo to the present, with Wiley College, Lady Bird Johnson's inaugural gown and a military gallery across the square in Memorial City Hall.
• Jefferson Historical Museum — 14 mi
  A four-floor museum in Jefferson's 1888-90 federal post office and courthouse, with rooms for African-American history, Jewish heritage, the Caddo and Diamond Bessie, bought by the historical society in 1965 for $8,100.

More markers nearby

• Bethesda Baptist Church — 0.3 mi
• Site of Marshall University — 0.4 mi
• Alexander Travis Hawthorn — 0.5 mi
• Lt. Gen. George Perry Rains — 0.5 mi