Italy Colored City Hall

The little building survives in a photograph from its own decade. The University of Texas at Arlington's Fort Worth Star-Telegram collection holds a print titled Colored City Hall in Italy, Texas, dated in the archive to December 31, 1953, and cataloged under the subject headings Segregation and City Halls, which fits the plaque's 1953 construction date. The Waxahachie Sun reported in 2026 that Elmerine Allen Bell, proprietor of the Italy Colored City Hall Museum and a member of the county historical commission, led the research behind the town's other recent marker, for educator William Stafford.

What the plaque says

Italy Colored City Hall Frustrated by poor infrastructure, residents of an African American community in Italy called "the Hill" rallied to get a hearing with the city council in the mid-twentieth century. A group of African American men met in a small building on Poplar Street to discuss their impending meeting with the city council. The meeting between them and the all-white city council led to the establishment of the Italy Colored City Council around 1950. Elections for both city councils were held at the same time, and all citizens could vote on both ballots. In the first election for the Colored City Council, the people elected John Henry Farrow (1891-1959) as mayor, Nelton Tarrant (1913-1989) as secretary, and James "Jim" Hardeman (1885-1953), Matthew Sweatt (1882-1969), Walter Smith (1893-1961), Edd Lee Lewis (1900-1967), and William Costonia Jennings (1920-2009) as aldermen. A march 1951 issue of Ebony magazine featured the men in the article, "Texas' first Negro Mayor." Most, if not all, of the men elected to the council were descendants of enslaved people in Ellis County, illustrating the continued endurance of African Americans in Ellis County. The small wooden building with the sign "Colored City Hall" on the front was built in 1953 on Williams Street. The building served as a meeting place for African American council members and represented hope and progress for the Italy African American community. Despite the history of racial violence and segregation in Ellis County, the Italy Colored City Hall stands as a symbol of African American self-determination and political activism. (2017)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ellis County Courthouse — 14 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.
• Hill County Courthouse — 18 mi
  Wesley C. Dodson's limestone Second Empire courthouse of 1890 on the Hillsboro square, gutted by fire on New Year's Day 1993 and rededicated in 1999 after a rebuilding that two Willie Nelson concerts helped pay for.
• Petroleum Industry Park — 26 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.

More markers nearby

• William Hobart Stafford — steps away
• General Edward H. Tarrant — 0.6 mi
• Site of the Plantation Home of Edward H. Tarrant — 3.8 mi
• Cotton Industry in Ellis County — 3.8 mi