In the face of gentrification–and over a century after an attack by The Klan on a notable church building, one community seeks to preserve a piece of Texas history through a national online competition.
Update: the city of San Marcos won the competition and will celebrate the occasion on November 19 (details).
A bit of background for this story, from a September 2018 piece:
The Old First Baptist Church is located in the Dunbar Historic District, a historically African-American neighborhood. In 1873, the church was set ablaze by Ku Klux Klan members. Thirty years later, it was rebuilt on Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive. In 1986, the church was boarded up and hasn’t been open to the public since. A revived resident-led movement to restore the church has been underway since early 2018. Currently, the church is entered in a public-voting based competition for a $150,000 grant to go toward the restoration. The top 10 projects of the 20 entered will receive the grant. (Read more)
The online competition mentioned above is National Geographic’s Vote Your Main Street, and it runs through October 26, 2018. In fact the structure, once a meeting place for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), is the only historic building in the Lone Star State in the national competition, which has several faith structures with strong civil rights ties.
If the San Marcos church is among the buildings selected through the competition, it will receive $150,000.00 for preservation efforts.
Among the people and organizations spearheading the efforts to protect the San Marcos building is The Calaboose African American History Museum. Located across the street from the church, the museum is housed in an erstwhile jail for black prisoners and is a resource for those who wish to preserve and promote the city’s Dunbar neighborhood.
Think you’d like to help San Marcos preservationists win money to save the church?
Here’s how to vote:
1. Go to VoteYourMainStreet.org/SanMarcos.
2. Sign up for an account.
3. Verify your email address. (You can also use Facebook to sign in, if you wish.)
4. Vote for the historic First Baptist Church every day through Oct. 26th! Note that you must vote 5x each time you vote.
5. Share this post with your friends using the hashtags #LandmarkofHope and #VoteYourMainStreet!
You can learn more about the individuals behind this preservation movement via the Texas Standard and see more photographs at Landmark of Hope.
Thanks for reading!
Want Our Free Monthly Newsletter?
We’d love to keep you personally up-to-date on the stories and events shared here at TheTexasWildflower.com. {Learn more | Privacy policy}
