Terrell Heights

Terrell Heights did not begin as a Black neighborhood. Its residents were exclusively white until about 1900, when well-off Black families started buying property there, and Visit Fort Worth calls it the city's first middle-class Black community. Doctors, lawyers and professors lived in its houses. Later many moved to the suburbs, and blue-collar and working-class families took their place. Nightclubs such as the Aquarium Club and The Zanzibar gave way to restaurants and small local businesses, and Drake's Cafeteria, a soul food spot, has since closed.

What the plaque says

Terrell Heights Platted in the late 1880s and developed around the city's streetcar systems in the early 1900s, the near southeast neighborhood known as Terrell Heights became the premier neighborhood for many African Americans. Virtually built out by 1951, the majority of the neighborhood was devoted to single-family development with a few apartment buildings and duplexes spread throughout the area. Many of the first occupants in this area were encouraged to purchase lots and build their own homes by local African American banker, William Madison "Gooseneck Bill" McDonald. Himself a resident of the neighborhood since circa 1911, McDonald bought lots in this area and sold them to African Americans. He then offered to finance the building of residences. Those who followed McDonald into the area included doctors, dentists, nurses, educators, religious leaders and laborers. Fellow resident Reverend A.W. Pryor was pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church (1924-1949). Dr. George D. Flemmings was a dentist and president of the Fort Worth-Tarrant County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He was president circa 1937-1975 during the desegregation clashes in Fort Worth and assisted other nearby communities. Mrs. Lucille Smith was the first African American woman to be a member of the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce. Social institutions were formed with the neighborhood's best interests at heart as well as several commercial establishments and churches. The first theater in Fort Worth to be built specifically for African Americans, the Grand Theater, opened in 1938 with the newest and best equipment. Though change has occurred through the years, the neighborhood's families have established a tight-knit community bound together by a common history. (2017)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tarrant County Courthouse — 1.8 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 2.9 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.
• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 3.0 mi
  A hall of fame begun in Hereford in 1975 to honor rodeo women, widened in 1977 to Western heritage, and housed in Fort Worth's Cultural District since 2002.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 4.1 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.

More markers nearby

• St. Andrews United Methodist Church of Fort Worth — 0.2 mi
• James E. Guinn School — 0.3 mi
• Baker Funeral Home — 0.3 mi
• Beth-el Congregation — 0.7 mi