William Madison McDonald

McDonald's bank mattered because other banks would not lend. Wikipedia says deposits from Black Masonic lodges gave the Fraternal Bank and Trust Company capital to lend to Black entrepreneurs, who found it hard to get credit from White-owned banks in segregated Texas. It adds that the bank survived the Great Depression under his management. His Fort Worth years followed a political collapse. After poll taxes and white primaries took hold, Wikipedia says, more than 100,000 Black Texans voted in the 1890s but only about 5,000 by 1906, the year he moved to Fort Worth.

What the plaque says

William Madison McDonald (June 22, 1866 - July 4, 1950) Born in Kaufman County, William "Gooseneck Bill" McDonald became active in politics in 1890. His ability to unite Black and White voters led to his prominence as a leader of the "Black and Tan" faction of the Republican Party. He remained influential, serving as a delegate to many state and national conventions, until the decline of the Republican Party in Texas in the early 1900s. Also active in black Masonic societies, he served as state secretary for 47 years. He moved to Fort Worth in 1906, founded the Fraternal Bank and Trust Company, and was a prominent civic leader. (1982)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Worth Stockyards — 1.2 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.
• Tarrant County Courthouse — 1.3 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 — 1.9 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 — 2.4 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.

More markers nearby

• Hagar Tucker — steps away
• Governor Charles A. Culberson — steps away
• General Thomas N. Waul, C.S.A. — steps away
• John Peter Smith_Oakwood Cemetery Founder — 0.2 mi