James K. Polk Record

Record was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1866, which met in Austin from February to April. The Handbook of Texas says it split between radical Unionists and secessionists, declared secession null and void without fixing a date and held that slavery was abolished. Delegates agreed that freedmen could sue, contract and testify in cases involving their own people, but Black suffrage found little support and Black Texans were barred from public office. Voters approved the resulting amendments that June by 28,119 to 23,400.

What the plaque says

James K. Polk Record (Oct. 29, 1834 - Jan. 16, 1872) Educated in Tennessee as a lawyer, J. K. P. Record became the District Attorney for Dallas in 1860. He left that office to serve in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, but returned here after the conflict. In 1866 he became a state Senator and served as a delegate to the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1866. He later practiced law in Dallas and was an active member of the Masons and the Odd Fellows organizations. (1986)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 0.5 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 0.8 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 0.8 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 2.1 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.

More markers nearby

• Crockett, John McClannahan — steps away
• Nicholas Henry Darnell — steps away
• Juliette Abbey Peak Fowler — steps away
• James W. Latimer (Weck) — steps away