Matthew W. Dogan, Sr.

Dogan held office well beyond the campus. The Handbook of Texas says he was president of the Standard Mutual Fire Insurance Company, the National Association of Teachers in Colored Schools and the Teachers State Association of Texas. Rust College gave him an honorary Ph.D. in 1904 and New Orleans University a doctor of divinity in 1910, and Walden College and Howard University also honored him. He voted Republican and was active in Methodist Episcopal, fraternal and civic groups. He retired in 1942 and died at his Marshall home on June 17, 1947.

What the plaque says

Matthew W. Dogan, Sr. Matthew Winfred Dogan was born on December 21, 1863 in Pontotoc, Mississippi. His parents, William and Jennie Dogan, were born slaves, but were able to purchase their freedom and that of their six children in 1858. Determined to educate their children, the family moved to Holly Springs, Miss., in 1869 where there was a school organized by the Freedman's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. At Rust College, Dogan was recognized as valedictorian of his 1886 senior class and then began as a math teacher in Holly Springs. He married his childhood sweetheart, Fannie Faulkner, in 1888 and they had seven children, two of whom died in infancy. In 1892, Dogan moved to Central Tennessee College (later Fisk University) in Nashville, Tennessee as a mathematician. In 1896, Bishop Robert Jones promoted Dogan to Wiley College, making him its second African American president. When Dogan arrived, Wiley was struggling in its 20th year of operation with 285 students. By 1905, Dogan oversaw the construction of thirteen buildings and almost doubled enrollment. Dogan successfully secured the funding for a Carnegie Library on campus. After two years of debate, the building was completed in 1907 entirely by student labor and remained the only truly public library in Marshall until 1972. Dogan also established an endowment for Wiley and, after four years, had raised more than $600,000. Time and again, Dogan supported his students and professors, even preventing potentially violent confrontations within the segregated community. Dogan spent decades at Wiley College, retiring in 1942. He died in 1947 and is buried in Wiley Cemetery. Matthew Dogan's legacy may be remembered through several schools in East Texas that bear his name and as an advocate for educational equality. (2014)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Starr Family Home State Historic Site — 0.5 mi
  Maplecroft, the 1871 Greek Revival house Frank Starr built in Marshall, with Ruth Starr Blake's glass and china, an 1880s kitchen restored in 2019 and a retirement home built for a formerly enslaved person.
• Harrison County Historical Museum — 0.8 mi
  Galleries in Marshall's 1901 courthouse that run from the Caddo to the present, with Wiley College, Lady Bird Johnson's inaugural gown and a military gallery across the square in Memorial City Hall.
• Texas and Pacific Railway Depot and Museum — 1.1 mi
  The only surviving building of the Texas and Pacific shops at Marshall, a 1912 Mission Revival depot saved from demolition in the 1990s, still an Amtrak stop, with a railway museum and a Mikado locomotive.
• Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 15 mi
  Wetlands and woods on part of a former ammunition plant, now a refuge for wood ducks, prothonotary warblers and alligator snapping turtles, with four easy trails and a free visitor center on a Ramsar lake.

More markers nearby

• Melvin B. Tolson — steps away
• Wiley College — steps away
• James Leonard Farmer, Sr. — steps away
• H. B. Pemberton — 0.2 mi