St. John Baptist Church

The storm that scattered this congregation's founders began at Indianola on September 15, 1875, when the port was crowded with visitors for a trial tied to the Sutton-Taylor feud. Two days later only eight buildings stood undamaged. The Handbook of Texas puts the dead at 150 to 300 in one entry and at 176 in another; nobody fixed the number. Indianola had more than 5,000 people, was rebuilt smaller, wrecked again in 1886 and abandoned by 1887. The Black survivors who reached Corpus Christi began a church here.

What the plaque says

St. John Baptist Church Survivors of an 1875 hurricane that hit the coastal town of Indianola moved to Corpus Christi and organized a baptist church for African Americans. Named St. John Free Mission Baptist Church, the congregation met in a barn until a sanctuary was built in 1876 at the corner of North Broadway and Twigg. The building was moved in 1910 to a new site at 1305 Ramirez Street. The first full-time pastor began holding worship services in 1921. A new church building was erected before 1940 to accommodate the growing membership, and an annex was added by 1945. Musical programs supported by the church included a choir, church band, and Glee Club quartet that was broadcast by four local radio stations for several years. In 1958, the congregation purchased 3.5 acres of land at this site and began construction of a new church building. The first phase of the building program, completed in October 1961, included several new rooms for church activities and sports facilities. A new sanctuary was finished and dedicated in May 1969, completing the building program. The church was supported many community activities and several social outreach ministries, and maintains active programs for its membership. (1996)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mirador de la Flor — 5.3 mi
  Corpus Christi's bayfront memorial to Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, the Tejano singer from this city, killed in 1995 at twenty-three, visited by about thirty thousand people a year.
• Art Museum of South Texas — 6.0 mi
  Philip Johnson's 1972 museum on the Corpus Christi bayfront, joined in 2006 by Ricardo Legorreta's Miller Wing, holding more than 2,000 works mostly from Texas and the Americas.
• Texas State Aquarium — 6.2 mi
  A nonprofit aquarium on the tip of Corpus Christi Beach built around the Gulf and the Caribbean, with the largest coastal wildlife rescue center in Texas behind the exhibits.
• USS Lexington Museum on the Bay — 6.4 mi
  An Essex-class carrier of 1943 moored off North Beach, the Blue Ghost that Tokyo Rose kept reporting sunk, and the Navy's training carrier for nearly three decades after.

More markers nearby

• Stanley L. Kostoryz — 2.0 mi
• Moravian Club of Nueces County — 2.0 mi
• Moses Menger Elementary School — 3.6 mi
• Sisters of the Incarnate Word — 3.7 mi