Mount Zion Baptist Church

Mount Zion served as more than a sanctuary. Abilene's chapter of the NAACP was organized there on December 10, 1950. The 1940 move to the north side meant a new building on Ash Street, which burned in 1968. The congregation then settled on the street where it stands today, named for Robert Stafford, principal of the Woodson school, and his wife, both longtime members, so a school administrator's name now marks the address of Abilene's oldest Black church.

What the plaque says

Mount Zion Baptist Church The Reverend James Curry, a missionary from Sherman, Texas, organized this congregation in 1885. It is the oldest African American church in the city. The Reverend James Lewis served as first pastor of the congregation, which met in a small house near the railroad tracks until about 1907, when a sanctuary was erected at the corner of 4th and Cherry streets in the south part of town. The church moved to the north side of town in 1940. A part of Abilene history for well over a century, Mount Zion Baptist Church continues to serve the community with a variety of programs. (1995)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Frontier Texas! — 0.6 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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

• Abilene Negro High School — steps away
• James Winford Hunt — steps away
• Claiborne Walker Merchant — steps away
• Macedonia Baptist Church — steps away