Mt. Pisgah C.M.E. Church

Odell Horton, the Mt. Pisgah member for whom the federal building is named, was born in Bolivar in 1929, served in the Marines, and graduated from Morehouse in 1951 and Howard Law in 1956. In Memphis he practiced law, served as an assistant U.S. attorney, sat on the criminal court, was a bankruptcy judge, and led LeMoyne-Owen College from 1970 to 1974. President Carter nominated him to the federal bench in 1980, and he was chief judge from 1987 to 1994. He died in 2006.

What the plaque says

Mt. Pisgah C.M.E. Church Mt. Pisgah, founded in 1879 by ex-slaves, is one of the oldest churches and the only Christian Methodist Episcopal (C. M. E.) Church in the Orange Mound community. The Reverend J. C. Powell served as the church's first pastor. Erected in 1929, members of this Gothic Revival structure housed refugees during Arkansas' 1937 "Great Flood." In 1950, Mt. Pisgah hosted the Tennessee NAACP Conference. In 2007, the Memphis Federal Building was renamed after Mt. Pisgah member Odell Horton, Memphis' first African American federal judge.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stax Museum of American Soul Music — 3.0 mi
  A rebuilt Stax studio on the site of the old Capitol Theatre, with a replica of the sloped-floor Studio A, Isaac Hayes's Cadillac and the story of an integrated soul label.
• Elmwood Cemetery — 3.0 mi
  Memphis's oldest active cemetery, a rural garden cemetery of about 1,500 trees opened in 1852, with Black civic leaders, yellow fever victims and the city's whole history in its lots.
• Sun Studio — 3.9 mi
  The small Union Avenue room where Sam Phillips recorded Rocket 88, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley and the Million Dollar Quartet, now a National Historic Landmark.
• Beale Street — 4.6 mi
  The street that became the center of Black Memphis after the Civil War, home to Church's Park, W. C. Handy, Ida B. Wells and the blues, now a National Historic Landmark district.

More markers nearby

• Orange Mound — steps away
• Mt. Moriah Baptist Church — 0.4 mi
• Thomas F. Cassels — 2.0 mi
• Zion Cemetery — 2.0 mi