William Madison McDonald

The Handbook of Texas differs from the plaque on his start. It gives his birth at College Mound on June 22, 1866, to a father who had been enslaved and a free mother; the plaque says both parents were former slaves and names Johnson Point. The Handbook says he attended Roger Williams University in Nashville with help from Z. T. Adams and other White friends, led Texas Republicans after Norris Wright Cuney died in 1897, and lost party control to the "Lily Whites" in 1900. In Fort Worth he founded a bank that held funds for Black Masonic lodges.

What the plaque says

William Madison McDonald William Madison McDonald William Madison "Gooseneck Bill" McDonald was born in 1866 near Johnson Point, a small community southeast of Terrell. His parents, former slaves, were George McDonald, born in Tennessee, and Flora Scott McDonald, born in Alabama. His mother died when he was young, and his father remarried to Belle Crouch. McDonald started school at age seven and graduated from high school in 1884. He had the reputation of being the smartest boy in all the area schools. During his youth, he worked for attorney and rancher Capt. Z.T. Adams, who took an interest in McDonald, lecturing him on business and law while he worked. After graduating, McDonald was principal of the African American high school in Forney. His first wife, Alice Gibson McDonald, was a teacher there. He remained principal for several years. McDonald was an early leader in Texas' Republican party as part of the "Black and Tan" faction, a group of whites and blacks who shared leadership roles. His political partnership with powerful businessman E.H.R. Green provided him a strong voice in state politics. In 1899, he became the right worshipful grand secretary of Texas' African American Masons, a position he held for almost 50 years. McDonald moved in 1906 to Fort Worth, where he was a civic leader and businessman. He died in 1950 and is buried in Old Trinity Cemetery, part of Fort Worth's Oakwood Cemetery. Throughout his life, McDonald was a leader in the struggle for social justice, advocating persistence and civic and moral responsibility as the steps to equality. (2002)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• No. 1 British Flying Training School Museum — 12 mi
  A free museum at Terrell's airport where about 2,200 RAF cadets learned to fly between 1941 and 1945, with logbooks, uniforms, letters and original training aircraft.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 13 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Fair Park — 17 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.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 17 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.

More markers nearby

• Forney — steps away
• Dixie Overland Highway (U. S. Highway 80) — steps away
• 1899 Automobile Trip — steps away
• The Forney Messenger — 0.2 mi