DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker at Macedonia Baptist Church has to say, and friend, this one's worth your full attention. Long before Abilene was the city it would become, the people who built it from the ground up — the ones who laid the bricks and swept the floors and raised the children — needed places of their own. Places where they could govern themselves, educate themselves, and worship on their own terms.
That story starts with Mt. Zion Baptist Church, organized in 1885, and a school for black children that opened its doors in 1890 with twenty-two pupils. Twenty-two kids, a new school, and a community already reaching for something.
But the desire didn't stop there. In 1898, the Rev. J.
H. Herron of San Angelo organized Macedonia Baptist Church. The charter members you ought to know by name: Richard Hayes, the church's first deacon, and his wife Winnie Hayes — and Jim and Alice Slaughter.
Four people. A foundation. They purchased property at this very site and, by 1903, had raised up a small frame building with their own hands.
Now, here's where the telling gets heavy, and it should. These were sometimes violent years. The pastors who answered calls to serve in Abilene did so knowing — knowing — there was real fear for their own well-being.
Not rumor. Not nervousness. Real fear.
And they came anyway. That's not a small thing to say out loud on a Texas road, and it shouldn't be. Around 1923, something happened inside that sanctuary that had never happened before in Abilene.
The first commencement exercises for African American students in the city were held right there in the church. One graduate that year. One.
A member of the congregation. And the whole community gathered inside those walls to mark it. By 1936, a longtime member named H.
D. Cumby was called as minister. Under his consistent leadership, the church expanded, remodeled, expanded again — and in 1951, an entirely new and modern building went up.
Then in 1956, Dyess Air Force Base opened, and that brought growth to the church and its membership in ways that rippled outward for years. Rev. H.
D. Cumby retired in 1965, shortly before his death. The leadership he left behind carried something forward that the marker is careful to name directly: during the racially turbulent years of the nineteen-sixties and seventies, Macedonia Baptist Church leaders were credited with deflecting much tension and violence in Abilene.
That's a sentence that carries the weight of everything that came before it — the fear of those early pastors, the frame building, the single graduate, the long decades of building something real inside a city that wasn't always building back. Macedonia Baptist Church is still a vital part of Abilene's religious and community life today. Some stories don't end so much as they keep going.
This is one of them.
What the marker says
The early community support system for citizens of color in Abilene included Mt. Zion Baptist Church, organized in 1885, and the first area school for black children, which opened in 1890 with 22 pupils. Because of African Americans' continuing desire for self-governed religious education, the Macedonia Baptist Church was organized in 1898 by the Rev. J. H. Herron of San Angelo. The charter members were Richard Hayes (the church's first deacon), his wife Winnie Hayes and Jim and Alice Slaughter. They purchased property at this site and built a small frame building by 1903. These were sometimes violent years, and the pastors who followed calls to service in Abilene did so in spite of real fear for their own well-being. The first commencement exercises for African American students in Abilene were held about 1923 in the sanctuary of Macedonia Baptist Church. The single graduate that year was a member of the church. In 1936, a longtime member, H. D. Cumby, was called as minister. Under his consistent leadership the church was expanded and remodeled frequently, with the construction of an entirely new and modern building in 1951. Dyess Air Force Base, opened in 1956, greatly contributed to the growth of the church and its membership. The Rev. H. D. Cumby retired in 1965 shortly before his death. Macedonia Baptist Church leaders, long known for their involvement in the Abilene community, were credited with deflecting much tension and violence during the racially turbulent years of the 1960s and 1970s. The church continues to be a vital part of Abilene's religious and community life. (1999)