Historical Marker
St. John Baptist Church
Memphis, Shelby County · Tennessee
The Cotton Makers' Jubilee began as an answer to a parade. After the 1934 Cotton Carnival, where Black men were seen pulling floats, dentist R. Q. Venson asked that Black Memphians take part fully, was refused, and created a celebration of their own; the first was held in May 1936 with his wife, Ethyl Horton Venson, as queen. Nat D. Williams, who co-founded it and is credited with naming it, became WDIA's first Black disc jockey. In 1999 the event was renamed the Kemet Jubilee and turned to teaching about Egypt.
What the plaque says
St. John Baptist Church St. John Baptist Church was founded in 1868 by the Rev. George J. Mosby and several persons formerly enslaved. After several relocations, the Rev. Alexander McEwen Williams, a former member of the National Baptist Convention's Sunday School Publishing Board, Dr. Ransom Q. Venson, founder of the Cotton Makers' Jubilee (an event of pride and protest against Jim Crow segregation), and the members opened the doors at current location on May 10, 1953. Notable member WDIA's Rufus Thomas. America's "oldest teenager" and co-worker, Nat D. Williams, the first Black disc jockey in the South, taught Sunday School here and was a history teacher and mentor
Where it stands
35.13446, -90.04022 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Sun Studio — 0.4 miThe 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 — 0.7 miThe 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.
- Elmwood Cemetery — 0.9 miMemphis'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.
- 1866 Memphis Massacre Marker at Army Park — 0.9 miA privately funded NAACP marker in a small downtown park, placed in 2016, that names the May 1866 attack on Black South Memphis as a massacre.