Dr. James Lee Dickey

Maureen Gray's study of Dickey, published through USC's Scalar project, describes the conditions behind the 1932 typhoid fight. South Taylor landowners moved old farm shacks into town with no electricity, gas, running water or sewage, she writes, and some families could not pay the $1.30 monthly water fee and dipped from creeks. The only hospital beds open to Black patients were two behind a white hospital, so Dickey turned an abandoned boarding house at 401 Bland Street into a temporary hospital. When he arrived in 1921 he was one of about 140 Black physicians in Texas.

What the plaque says

Dr. James Lee Dickey Physician, humanitarian, civil rights advocate and concerned citizen Dr. James Lee Dickey (d. 1959) had a profound effect on the quality of life in his adopted hometown of Taylor. Born in McLennan County in 1893, he attended Waco public schools and Tillotson College, Austin. Military service in World War I interrupted his training at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, but upon graduation in 1921, he returned to central Texas to help his widowed mother raise his eight siblings. He settled in Taylor with his wife, Magnolia (Fowler) (1902-1959), as the city's only African American doctor at the time. Dr. Dickey worked hard to address the public health needs of Taylor, calling for improvements to the local water supply and heading a community effort against an outbreak of typhoid fever in 1932-33. A clinic he opened in a house at that time expanded to serve residents of the city and counties in the surrounding area. He developed programs for infant care and was instrumental in admitting African American patients to state tubercular clinics. Dr. Dickey's advocacy extended beyond health care to education and civil rights. He worked for passage of school bonds and improvements, and led efforts for local recreational facilities and federal housing. He was also a founder of the Taylor Negro Chamber of Commerce and served as a trustee of Tillotson College. For his efforts, Dr. Dickey received numerous awards and honors, including distinction by the Taylor Chamber of Commerce as Man of the Year in 1952. His greatest rewards, however, came through his lasting contributions to the citizens of Taylor. As he noted, "to live in the hearts of those we leave behind is not to die." (2006)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Williamson County Courthouse — 17 mi
  The fifth Williamson County courthouse, a Beaux Arts building by C. H. Page, rises over a Georgetown square of more than 50 Victorian-era buildings.
• Inner Space Cavern — 17 mi
  A Georgetown cave found in 1963 when highway engineers drilled test holes, holding Pleistocene fossils and 72-degree rooms that visitors reach by an artificial tunnel.
• The Round Rock — 17 mi
  A table-shaped stone in Brushy Creek gave Round Rock its name in 1854; the Chisholm Trail crossed the creek near it, and Old Town stayed behind when the railroad pulled the town east.
• LBJ Presidential Library — 28 mi
  A ten-story travertine archive on the University of Texas campus holding 45 million pages from a presidency of civil rights laws, the War on Poverty and Vietnam.

More markers nearby

• Tex Avery — 0.3 mi
• Bill Pickett — 0.3 mi
• City of Taylor — 0.3 mi
• First Presbyterian Church of Taylor — 0.3 mi