Mount Gilead Baptist Church

KCBD reported in 2022 that eight Black community members started the church in 1917. It was named a Lubbock Historical Landmark in 1987, and after its first marker deteriorated, the chair of the Lubbock County Historical Commission presented a new one in June 2022. That September the congregation, led by senior pastor J. Jerome Johnson Jr., asked for donations and volunteer roofers and engineers after fresh roof damage; on rainy days members sectioned off pews. In the 1980s Black residents made up about 9 percent of Lubbock's 187,000 people, and Juneteenth draws large crowds each year.

What the plaque says

Mount Gilead Baptist Church The organizational meeting for this congregation was held in October 1917 by the Rev. A. Wilson. Although early problems plagued the fellowship and many members left the church, a successful cotton harvest in September 1919 attracted more people to Lubbock, which helped increase membership in the church. Mt. Gilead has been host to the West Texas Association of Baptist Churches and has long promoted programs of music and evangelism. Believed to be Lubbock's oldest black congregation, Mt. Gilead maintains a significant role of leadership in the community. 1984

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• American Windmill Museum — 0.8 mi
  Lubbock's park of restored water-pumping windmills and early wind chargers, more than 70 of them turning outdoors and the rare ones under roof, with a megawatt-era turbine overhead.
• Buddy Holly Center — 0.9 mi
  The city's museum of Buddy Holly and West Texas music in a 1928 railway depot, with the house where the Crickets worked on That'll Be the Day moved next door.
• National Ranching Heritage Center — 3.4 mi
  A Texas Tech outdoor museum where ranch houses, barns, windmills and a depot from across the ranching country were moved one by one onto a single park beside the campus.
• Lubbock Lake Landmark — 4.9 mi
  A bend of Yellow House Draw on Lubbock's north edge where digging has found nearly 12,000 years of people on the Southern High Plains, layer on layer, from Clovis to the 1880s.

More markers nearby

• Mary & Mac Private School — 0.3 mi
• Willie Lusk Jr. — 0.6 mi
• Lubbock's First Cotton Gin — 0.6 mi
• Buddy Holly — 0.9 mi