Salem Institutional Baptist Church

Salem's pastor left a second legacy in a burial ground. Rev. L. Butler Nelson came from Phoenix in 1954 to pastor the congregation, then called Salem Baptist. He pressed for the upkeep of a cemetery that joined two old ones, Woodland and Hillside. Its earliest headstone dates to 1896, and it served Black Dallas until 1969. The names and dates record people who arrived enslaved or as first-generation free men and women. Dallas made it a landmark in 2008, and the city says it is unlikely the cemetery would have been saved without his efforts.

What the plaque says

Salem Institutional Baptist Church James Solomon Sims, a missionary from Melissa, founded this church when he began services in the home of Mary Janie Moore in 1888. In 1891, the Reverends I. Tollivar and Allen R. Griggs organized the church and named it Salem Baptist Church. The church's first pastor, the Rev. C.N. Pryor, was called two years later. A simple frame building was constructed. Due to church growth, the church was rebuilt in 1911, 1917, 1922 and 1932. In 1947, the church relocated to 710 Bourbon Street. In 1959, the Rev. Luther Butler Nelson led Salem to organize and sponsor the Mayo Kindergarten School in West Dallas. City expansion projects led the Texas Highway Department to purchase Salem's property on Bourbon St., and the church relocated to Eugene and Crozier, a farming community of freedmen known as The Prairie, but later known as Queen City. Around this time, the church was renamed to Salem Institutional Baptist Church. The building, designed by architect Thomas Knowles, was dedicated in June 1963. Salem got right to work in its new location. The church offered financial assistance to lessen the burden of educational and medical expenses for many in the community. Salem served as host to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and organized a civil rights parade. Before the Rev. Nelson died in 1968, he worked to save an early neighborhood cemetery, which was then renamed after him in 1971. The 1970s saw Salem host the 38th annual Baptist Sunday School and Baptist Training Union Congress. In the following decades, Salem continued to reach out to the community through food ministries, education and advocacy. In 1988, Salem received special recognition from city and state officials in celebration of its 100th anniversary. (2022)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• African American Museum, Dallas — 1.5 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.
• Fair Park — 1.6 mi
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 1.8 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 2.9 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.

More markers nearby

• John C. McCoy — 0.4 mi
• General Richard M. Gano (C.S.A.) — 0.5 mi
• Lincoln High School — 0.8 mi
• South Boulevard-Park Row Historic District — 0.8 mi