New Hope Baptist Church

East Lubbock changed around the church after its 1949 sanctuary. Urban renewal, which ran from 1960 to 1975 and focused on North and East Lubbock, bought more than 400 family homes and lots, and residents say many families left. The May 11, 1970 tornado then blurred old lines: a lifelong East Lubbock resident recalls Black families beginning to cross the former East 19th Street boundary, while another argues that investment followed white residents out. Residents describe Interstate 27 as an imaginary wall that has limited growth between the east side and the rest of the city.

What the plaque says

New Hope Baptist Church Originally known as Mount Calvary Baptist, the historically African American New Hope Baptist Church organized in 1926 at 18th street and Avenue B, following a split from Caldonia Baptist Church. Under the tenure of Rev. G. H. Washington, the church moved to east 20th street and Birch Avenue (formerly called East Avenue B) in 1929. The church's name may have changed to New Hope Baptist church at the time of the move, though the new name did not appear in newspapers until 1933. Over the years, the church has continually seen many building improvements and growth. During Rev. Richard E. Jones' tenure, the New Zeal Baptist Association was formed and for many years several new hope preachers served as its moderator. In the 1930s and 1940s, the church figured prominently in community activities such as Juneteenth and Armistice Day. The church hosted the Junior Welfare League Baby Clinic to help provide health services for young children. Under the leadership of Rev. S. M. Meters, the current church sanctuary was built in 1949, which the congregation proudly celebrated. Rev. A. L. Dunn served for 29 years (1952-1981), spearheading additional improvements, including an educational building in 1957 and a new parsonage. He also served for several years as moderator of the west Texas association. New Hope is greatly involved in its community, initiating many outreach programs such as the Deacon Family Ministry Plan and means for care. The church also purchased a radio transmitter and has been broadcasting the morning worship services and the "New Hope Gospel Time" on Sunday evenings for over 30 years. Today, New Hope Baptist remains an active and vibrant congregation, "a church where people care." (2018)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Buddy Holly Center — 0.5 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.
• American Windmill Museum — 0.7 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.
• National Ranching Heritage Center — 3.0 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 — 4.5 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

• Lubbock's First Cotton Gin — steps away
• Greater St. Luke Missionary Baptist Church. — 0.4 mi
• Mount Gilead Baptist Church — 0.5 mi
• Buddy Holly — 0.5 mi