Dr. Hezekiah B. Hankal

Hankal was raised by James and Nancy Hankal until he was sixteen. The congregation he founded in Johnson City became a base for the town's Black education: Langston's first classes met in its basement in 1892 before the school moved to Myrtle and Elm Streets, and the next year he helped found Langston Normal School. His name now marks the city's Health Administrative building. Church histories describe him as a teacher as well as a physician and minister, and the congregation still meets on West Main Street.

What the plaque says

Dr. Hezekiah B. Hankal Ordained by Boones Creek Christian Church in 1866, Dr. Hezekiah B. Hankal established five churches in the region. A physician, his medical practice was confined to the African-American and the Cherokee-Dutch communities until the 1873 cholera epidemic desegregated his practice. Certified to teach in the public schools by the State of Tennessee in 1873, he served as one of the supervisors of "colored schools." In 1887, he was elected as an alderman for Johnson City. Dr. Hankal was one of the 1893 founders of Langston Normal School. His house was located on the corner of Market and Montgomery Streets. He is buried in West Lawn Cemetery.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park — 6.1 mi
  A shoal on the Watauga River where the Transylvania Company bought about 20 million acres from the Cherokee in March 1775, Dragging Canoe refused, and the Overmountain Men mustered in 1780.
• Rocky Mount Museum — 6.2 mi
  William Cobb's log house at Piney Flats, where Governor William Blount ran the Southwest Territory from 1790 to 1792, now a living-history museum set in 1791 with a reconstructed cabin for the enslaved.
• Jonesborough Historic District — 6.4 mi
  Tennessee's oldest town, chartered in 1779, where Elihu Embree printed The Emancipator in 1820 and a hay wagon by the courthouse started the National Storytelling Festival in 1973.
• Unicoi County Heritage Museum and the Erwin Rail Yard — 11 mi
  A museum in the old fish hatchery superintendent's house in Erwin, a Clinchfield railroad town where the elephant Mary was hanged in 1916 and Black residents were driven out in 1918.

More markers nearby

• Colored Christian Church and Colored School — steps away
• State Flag — steps away
• Johnson City Incorporated December 1, 1869 — 0.3 mi
• East Tennessee & Western North Carolina (ET & WNC) Depot — 0.3 mi