First Baptist Church of Edcouch

Edcouch's best-known history is a classroom protest. On November 14, 1968, nearly 200 Mexican American students walked out of Edcouch-Elsa High School over a ban on speaking Spanish, the exclusion of farmworker students from band and counselors who steered them away from college. Lali Saenz Moheno, a recent graduate in the Mexican American Youth Organization, wrote the first demands. The district expelled or suspended participants, and leaders were bused to La Joya High School. A court settlement readmitted the students in January 1969.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Edcouch Formed from a non-denominational Sunday School organized in 1920, the Los Indios Baptist Church was organized by the Rev. T. F. Kelly and the Rev. M. F. Drury on August 24, 1924. In 1925 the church moved to land adjoining the Adams Tract Gin and then to a site just south of the future Edcouch town site. The church was called Adams Tract Baptist Church until February 1927, when it moved into the newly platted town and became the First Baptist Church of Edcouch. In 1949 the members dedicated a new brick building. Through mission and community service, the First Baptist Church of Edcouch continues the traditions of its founders. (1998)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Museum of South Texas History — 12 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 — 18 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.
• La Lomita Chapel — 24 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 — 26 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.

More markers nearby

• Hilltop Gardens — 7.0 mi
• Weslaco — 9.5 mi
• Citrus Fruit Developed in Rio Grande Valley - Red-Meat Grapefruit — 9.6 mi
• Camp Llano Grande — 9.7 mi