Mount Pleasant Baptist Church

The highway that took this church's first ground in the 1940s came before a larger loss for the ward. In the 1960s the state highway department built the interchange of US 59 and Interstate 10 through the middle of Fifth Ward, and planner Kyle Shelton counts more than 900 homes and businesses removed within its footprint alone. The eastern arm of I-10 cut away large parts of Kelly Village, a 300-unit public housing project of the 1930s. Shelton writes that the crossing highways bisected the community the church has served since 1876.

What the plaque says

Mount Pleasant Baptist Church Mount Pleasant Baptist Church Houston's Fifth Ward developed primarily after the Civil War, when freedmen came to the area. In 1866, an alderman represented the ward, comprised of Anglo and African Americans, in the city's government. The earliest institutions were churches, including Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, which grew out of Mount Zion Baptist Church. The Mount Zion church moved across Buffalo Bayou after its sanctuary burned. Some church members had to cross the bayou on skiffs for worship, and a group decided to form a new church, Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, closer to home. In a one-room store in 1876, the Rev. George W. Booker led his wife, Lizzie, Abe and Patsy Gray, Nathan and Susan Ann Johnson, and Sarah Scott in services. These seven men and women purchased a lot on Liberty Street, now known as Rothwell, and built a brush arbor there. Many joined Mount Pleasant Baptist Church after a revival, and within a short time, after raising funds at festivals and suppers, the church built a wooden sanctuary. The first sanctuaries were destroyed by storms and a fire. After each disaster, church men and women salvaged building materials for their next sanctuary. The Rev. George Booker resigned in 1908 and was followed by the Rev. Joe J. James. During his pastorate, the Women's Missionary Society organized and became a part of church leadership. In the 1940s, the City of Houston bought the church's land for highway construction. The church purchased land at Solo and Hershe Streets from the Clay and Clay funeral directors and began to build a new sanctuary. The members held their first services in the new house of worship in 1951. With only five pastors during its first 125 years, Mount Pleasant Baptist Church maintains the traditions of its founding members, with generations of area families still serving and ministering to the Fifth Ward community. (2002) Incising on back: PASTORS REV. GEORGE W. BOOKER (1876-1908) REV. JOE J. JAMES (1909-1931) REV. HOWARD O. SCOTT (1932-1959) REV. ACY DOYAL McCRAW (1959-2000) REV. ROY LEE JACKSON (2000- )

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 3.3 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Emancipation Park — 3.9 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 4.5 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• Rothko Chapel — 5.3 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.

More markers nearby

• First Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church — 0.3 mi
• Peacock Records — 0.5 mi
• The Frenchtown Community — 1.2 mi
• Mount Vernon United Methodist Church — 1.3 mi