John Jay Good

Good's record as a judge is the part the plaque leaves out. Elected judge of the Sixteenth Judicial District in June 1866, he was removed in November 1867 by General Philip Sheridan as an impediment to Reconstruction. Freedmen's Bureau agent William H. Horton criticized what he saw as Good's inaction on prosecuting crimes against Black residents and Unionists and called him disloyal. Good and former governor James Throckmorton sued Horton, and the suit was dismissed in 1872. Good was also the first president of the Dallas Bar Association, from 1873 to 1875.

What the plaque says

John Jay Good (1827-1882) Mississippi native John Jay Good practiced law in Alabama before moving to Dallas in 1851. He married Susan Anna Floyd in 1854. Good was involved in early local and state government and was a charter member of the local Odd Fellows' Lodge in 1855. He served the Confederacy in the Civil War as a colonel of an artillery regiment. Good later became a district judge and was elected as mayor of Dallas in 1880. (1996)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 0.6 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 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.
• 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.
• 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

• Trezevant Calhoun Hawpe — steps away
• Crockett, John McClannahan — steps away
• Nicholas Henry Darnell — steps away
• Juliette Abbey Peak Fowler — steps away