Macedonia Baptist Church

The church's work reached past Sunday. In June 1949 a meeting of concerned Black citizens at Macedonia led to a petition asking the school board for the vacated Americanization School building at 541 North Eighth; a second meeting that August, at Antioch, took up the need for recreation. The building at issue had been put up in 1929 as a five-room school for Black pupils before the Americanization School used it. The petition fell in the middle of Pastor H. D. Cumby's pastorate, from 1936 to 1965, and the church built an entirely new sanctuary in 1951.

What the plaque says

Macedonia Baptist Church The early community support system for citizens of color in Abilene included Mt. Zion Baptist Church, organized in 1885, and the first area school for black children, which opened in 1890 with 22 pupils. Because of African Americans' continuing desire for self-governed religious education, the Macedonia Baptist Church was organized in 1898 by the Rev. J. H. Herron of San Angelo. The charter members were Richard Hayes (the church's first deacon), his wife Winnie Hayes and Jim and Alice Slaughter. They purchased property at this site and built a small frame building by 1903. These were sometimes violent years, and the pastors who followed calls to service in Abilene did so in spite of real fear for their own well-being. The first commencement exercises for African American students in Abilene were held about 1923 in the sanctuary of Macedonia Baptist Church. The single graduate that year was a member of the church. In 1936, a longtime member, H. D. Cumby, was called as minister. Under his consistent leadership the church was expanded and remodeled frequently, with the construction of an entirely new and modern building in 1951. Dyess Air Force Base, opened in 1956, greatly contributed to the growth of the church and its membership. The Rev. H. D. Cumby retired in 1965 shortly before his death. Macedonia Baptist Church leaders, long known for their involvement in the Abilene community, were credited with deflecting much tension and violence during the racially turbulent years of the 1960s and 1970s. The church continues to be a vital part of Abilene's religious and community life. (1999)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Frontier Texas! — 0.4 mi
  Abilene's multimedia museum of the frontier as the settlers told it, beside the Texas and Pacific tracks the town was built on, and the official visitor center for the Texas Forts Trail.
• Buffalo Gap Historic Village — 13 mi
  The 1880 stone courthouse and jail of the county seat Abilene took away, with about twenty old buildings from around West Texas gathered around it since 1956.
• Fort Phantom Hill — 13 mi
  A field of lone stone chimneys north of Abilene, left by the fire after the Army left in 1854, later a stage stop and a buffalo-hide town of more than 500 people.
• Abilene State Park — 18 mi
  A pecan-shaded park on Elm Creek in the Callahan Divide south of Abilene, with red sandstone CCC buildings, a summer pool, a bird blind and yurts under the trees.

More markers nearby

• New Light Missionary Baptist Church — steps away
• Mount Zion Baptist Church — steps away
• Mexican-American / Americanization School — 0.2 mi
• Abilene Negro High School — 0.2 mi