Mt. Zion was one of the earliest Black Baptist congregations in post-Civil War Houston—and possibly the very earliest. Sometimes referred to as “the colored Baptist Church, which is situated near Frostown, in the 2d Ward,” the congregation apparently existed as early as the fall of 1865.¹

The 1866 Houston City Directory listed two “colored” Baptist congregations already existing by March 1866 at the latest. One was meeting in the German Methodist church, on Travis and McKinney, and the other met in “a building near the Buffalo Bayou, in the vicinity of Frost-town.”²

According to israel1998 and other sources, the Frost Town church was Mt. Zion, while the church that met initially in the German Methodist building later became Antioch Missionary Baptist Church.³

Used for School

By Local Black Teachers

According to a report in Tri-Weekly Telegraph, a day and night school with 60 scholars had already been established at the church by the “colored people” by October 1865, with teachers “H. Wilson, A. League, and A. Logan.”⁴

As early as February 1866, Freedmen’s Bureau agents reported that a school was being held “in the Mt. Zion Church (Colored Baptist).” It was taught by “Parson Aleck, as he is called, a colored man and Baptist Preacher” who refused to report to Henry W. Stuart or to let the building be used by a white teacher. One Bureau agent believed “this school should be placed in the charge of some good responsible white teacher.”⁵ A report the day before by a different Bureau agent identified “Alex Stephens (col)” as the teacher of a day school with 60 scholars operating in January in Houston (location otherwise unspecified); he may be the man referred to as “Parson Aleck.”⁶

By Lizzie F. Clay

By March 22, 1866, the Bureau had placed a white teacher, Lizzie F. Clay, “in the Mt. Zion Church (col).”⁷ It became the scene of a public confrontation between Clay and Henry W. Stuart when Stuart went to her school house “called her out” and vented his disagreements with the Bureau. On April 3, Bureau agent George W. Honey said he would “call the ‘Freedmen’ together at the Baptist Church tonight & give Miss Clay all the assistance she may need.”⁸

On May 23, 1866, students from Clay’s school joined scholars from Stuart’s school and one other at a “Pic-Nic” that was reported in the Telegraph and Texas Register, according to which the students paraded “through the principal streets, numbered several hundred, extending to a great length” and ending up “some distance from the city” for the coronation of the “Queen of May.”⁹ The 1867-1868 City Directory included the “novel” procession in its chronology of local events for 1866.

Mt. Zion was also briefly the site of a night school. By the end of 1866, however, Clay had decided to leave her post in Houston and gave a pessimistic final report about the prospects of a school continuing at Mt. Zion.¹⁰

By Jennie R. Foster

Clay was replaced by Jennie R. Foster, an AMA teacher whose arrival at the “Mt. Zion School” coincided with General Joseph B. Kiddoo’s implementation of a “tuition free” schools policy, leading to a spike in new enrollments: 109 new admissions according to Foster’s January 1867 report.¹¹ Only a few days into February, however, the Mt. Zion school house was burned, close to midnight on February 7 or in the early morning hours of February 8. City superintendent and teacher M. O’Regan was sure the fire had been set intentionally by those hostile to the school. The school appears to have then been broken up for a time; it was still out of operation by April 4.¹² The 1867-1868 city directory included the fire on its timeline of events for 1867: “February 7—A building used as a church and school house, belonging to freedmen, was destroyed by fire, at night.”

After the 1867 Fire

The church appears to have continued in Frost Town after the fire. An August 1867 article reported that an interracial marriage between Daniel Webster Castle and Fanny White took place at the church, “performed … by the Reverend Jesoe [sic] Dickerson, the presiding Minister of the Mount Zion flock.”¹³ And in November, a complaint was filed by the church against a freeman named James Porter for “swindling by obtaining money to be applied to use of ‘Zion Church’ and using the same for his personal use, and not giving satisfactory account of same.”¹⁴ But the Bureau did not resume a school there for the rest of the year, which also saw a debilitating yellow fever epidemic.

In a Bureau report for February 1868, however, there is an indirect reference to the reestablishment of the school, taught by Louran [sp?] P. Wheeler.¹⁵ An April 1868 report from Wheeler identifies her school as the “Mt. Zion School,” with a total enrollment of 46 for the month, and she apparently remains there through June.¹⁶

The school may not have resumed after the summer vacation and the events of June, however, at least in part due to Bureau assessments of the building. In September 1868, new Sub Assistant Commissioner M. E. Davis reported:

I have visited Mount Zion Church and find it in a very bad condition. There is not a window in it. A portion of the benches and door broken. It will cost at least $100 Dollars to repair the building. I do not think it advisable for the Govt. to repair the church as the affairs of the society are in a very bad condition. They have not even a lease of the land the building stands on and have never paid for the building [illegible] or lumber used in building it. Sheriff Hall informs me that he furnished the lumber for the building and was never able to get a cent. [illegible] finally he got authority from Col. Pease then Sub. Asst. Commr. to pull the building down and will do so unless the society makes some arrangement for the payment of his claim.¹⁷

Still, while a regular day school was not placed there, in January 1869, the AMA teachers Foster, Knapp, and Dayton were teaching a Sabbath School there on Sundays, mostly for adults.¹⁸ And the procession for Juneteenth later that year featured the “Mount Zion Association” on the order of march.

Used for Political Meetings

The small church building was apparently used for a variety of purposes: an August 1869 article says there would “be speaking before the Benevolent Society, at Mount Zion church, on Monday night, by Rev. Sandy Parker, Marion Brown and Freeman Reed.”¹⁹ Rev. William Norton, a teacher with the Freedmens Bureau who initially (but briefly) presided over the Gregory Institute early in 1870, preached at the “Mount Zion colored church in Frost-Town” towards the end of 1869.²⁰ And a school operated by “Rev. H. Seward” was “held at Mt. Zion Church, in the 2d ward, near the draw bridge,” with 65 students, in 1870, though apparently it was a private school not reporting to the Freedmens Bureau.²¹

Relocation and 1873 Fire

An unfriendly 1873 article published shortly after the death of Sandy Parker closely identified the Baptist preacher with “The Church of Mount Zion,” in Frost Town in the Second Ward, locating the building on the banks of the bend in Buffalo Bayou known then as “Devil’s Elbow” and owned by Peter Gabel. But by July 1873, it said, that church building (described here as “a school house of the back woods pattern, being constructed of rough boards and furnished with a rude pulpit and no-backed benches”) was “no more.”²²

By then, according to the state historic marker, the church had moved in 1872 to a small lot purchased in the Second Ward “fronting German Street (later Canal Street).” This is likely the “Col. Ch.” pictured on an 1884 city map. The church building at that location was set on fire at the very end of October 1873, “supposed by an incendiary.” A Black man named Joe Thomas who had disturbed a service there sometime earlier was quickly charged with and convicted of the arson.²³