Threads: The Audacity of New Hope Baptist Church – Part A

By Dr. J. Ester Davis

Even today, decades after my Dad’s death, my route once I am in the city limits of Conroe is altered, across the railroad track into my ole neighborhood.  I deliberately go pass our home church to see my Dad’s name, Deacon James Saddler, on the church inlaid cement marker. He was twenty(29)years in 1943 when ordained.

“If you want to know the history” of a community, you only have to visit the church. Moving to Dallas, it was clearly understood that I would go to church. I was asked often by my parents with a stern stare.

We chose Greater New Zion because they had chimes in the tower and a loudspeaker that worked. Getting involved in our church programming, first as a musician,   I soon found out that the ‘grand master’ of the South Dallas Christian Circle was New Hope Baptist Church. Two blocks north was Salem Baptist, across and down was St. Paul …and you had to pass South Dallas Baptist Church either way.  The ‘threads’ to these dynamic institutions-in-the-making were visionaries flanked with ‘new hope’ for the former slaves with the one single priority… education.  The churches had an abundance of educators. Coming out of slavery, African Americans concentrated on education and built schools and colleges in mass across the South.   

In 1875, Rev. Allen R. Griggs was the Pastor of New Hope.  He started a grammar school for ex-slaves.  In that same vein, he started Texas’ first African American newspaper. By the time I joined Greater New Zion, circa 1970, you could sense the educational movement still in full bloom. The unstoppable Mable Chandler was then the long serving Superintendent of the Sunday School at Greater New Zion.  She taught history for years at Lincoln High School and she taught history every Sunday at church. Her teachings were profound with the demanding stage-presence of an orator. She ‘merged the word’ with education.  In her book, “EM Scott’s Children Two Centuries”: From Slavery to America’s Corporate World, she mentioned the history of New Hope Baptist Church and how Greater New Zion, a sister church, was formed.

Sidebar:  I worked on another book uncompleted by Mrs. Julia Jordan, educator, longtime member of New Hope that with the aid of current pastor emeritus, Rev. Dr. Mayor Ron Jones, and other members we can do justice to.

At New Hope Baptist Church in 1892, the Negro Ladies Reading Circle was organized by eight teachers. The Colored State Baptist Convention was organized in a three-day conference a year later. The undisputed ‘hot topic’ was the progress blacks were making.  It was as though all of black America became a ‘bumble-bee’ colony and worked together on one massive project without script, manuals, affirmative action, slave master or disputes.  How did they do that?  Following the ‘threads-of-history’, the largest most prosperous trade for African American men after slavery was loggers, the railroad, carpenters, longshoresman (aka, the waterfront) and gamblers. The railroad and porters were definitely a part of this history and New Hope Baptist Church members were documented leaders in both the modernity of America, its education, registering to vote and paying poll taxes.

New Hope Baptist Church became a breeding field for African American growing success.  Ending this segment on ‘Threads’, Part A…. The top and bottom line is if you want to know the history….. of a community, you only have to visit the church.

Esterdavis2000@gmail.com (214.376.9000)