Past, present and future at new Black History Museum
The new Black History Museum in Marble Falls shares the stories of important figures both nationally and locally. The museum opens Feb. 22, 2025. Courtesy photos
The Black History Museum at St. Frederick Baptist Church in Marble Falls opens to the public Saturday, Feb. 22. Ceremonies are planned from noon to 3 p.m. While the sounds of pounding hammers and screeching saws can still be heard at the corner of Avenue N and Third Street, museum exhibits will be on display in time for a grand opening celebration, the Rev. George Perry and Bessie Jackson, the church’s clerk, who are organizing the event, told The Picayune Magazine for its February issue.
“We still have to finish off the air-conditioning and plumbing work, but everything else is just about ready to go,” Jackson said. “And we still have to paint the inside and outside, but it will mostly be done in time for the opening on Feb. 22.”
The museum has been under construction at 301 Avenue N for about two years but is finally nearing completion with the help of donations, fundraisers, and volunteers. St. Frederick has managed to pay for each step in the process, from foundation to roofing, so the facility will be debt-free when doors open.
Exhibits include information on important figures in Black history as well as Marble Falls-area residents who went on to successful careers.
“I want the students who are here today and will be here in the future to see the people who were here before them and know that they were part of this community,” Jackson said. “I want them to grow up to learn not to settle for nothing. I want them to see the positive that can come out of life if you apply yourself.”
One of those success stories is Edward Abney, a 1981 Marble Falls High School graduate who works as a medical technician at LENSAR in Altamonte Springs, Florida. He builds robotic laser systems that can perform cataract surgery in four minutes as opposed to hours in the operating room. The equipment costs $300,000 and has only been available for three years.
Abney plans to attend the museum’s opening.
“I think this is a great thing Marble Falls is doing,” he said. “I want the young African-Americans there to get a good feel for their school, for the city they are in, and know the people who came before them and contributed and paved the way for them.”
BUILDING A COMMUNITY
The 132-year-old St. Frederick Baptist Church is steeped in history and has deep roots in Marble Falls. It was organized in 1893 in the home of Dicey Yett Johnson, a freed slave who lived behind the Roper Hotel, where she worked.
Dicey and her husband, Green Johnson, raised nine children in Marble Falls. They established the church and a school for Black children in the Blazing Star Lodge building, then located at the corner of Main and Sixth streets.
When the Marble Falls school district was formed, Black students attended the Colored Normal George Washington Carver Elementary School in Marble Falls. Austin resident and retiree Mattie Odem was a student there through the eighth grade.
“It was a one-room school with one teacher for all the children first through the eighth grades,” Odem said. “After that, you either got a job or the school district paid for you to go to high school in Austin.”
Odem was in the 10th grade at L.C. Anderson High School in Austin when the U.S. Civil Rights Acts became law in 1964, desegregating schools and more. She finished her secondary education at Marble Falls High School, graduating in 1966. She went on to Huston-Tillotson University, an all-Black college in Austin, and then to what is now Texas State University in San Marcos for a teaching certificate. Odem taught special education in the Austin Independent School District for 36 years.
Although she only returned to Marble Falls to visit her parents and other family members, she has fond memories of growing up in the community, especially of her time at St. Frederick, where she was baptized when she was 9 years old.
“It’s a place where the community all came together with one common goal: unity and love for Jesus and to do the very best we could for one another,” she said. “It was a place to feel the love and camaraderie of all the family. It was a place of peace. At church, we didn’t let the outside world interfere with anything. It was considered a safe haven.”
Sunday church began at 9 a.m. and didn’t end until 7 p.m., sometimes later.
“You went to church all day long,” she said. “We’d set up tables under the trees by the creek, and between 11 (a.m.) and 3 p.m., we had food and fellowship, then went back into evening services.”
At the time, St. Frederick was located on Backbone Creek, where J.M Huber Corp. now processes and ships high-grade calcium carbonate from a nearby mine.
Odem plans to attend the museum’s grand opening and remarked on the importance of preserving Black history.
“I think people need to know what contributions the Black community made in Marble Falls,” she said. “They need to know what it cost those people to make their lives and livelihood there, and what it took for them to do that, and the obstacles they had to face, and the challenges they had to go through.”
Odem said Black children in the community, including those who attended St. Frederick, were sheltered from a lot of those challenges.
“The families came together to make sure that the children were well cared for and that we had the same experiences everybody else had,” she said. “They made sure we traveled; they made sure we flew on an airplane, rode trains, and traveled out of the country, even if it was just to Mexico. They came together to work to make sure the kids had a well-rounded education and well-rounded world experiences.”
Odem and Abney are not the only two Marble Falls graduates whose success stories will be part of museum exhibits. Jackson has a long list of people she has been tracking over the years. It includes an appointee of Gov. Greg Abbott, the founder and CEO of a major hot sauce company, a medical assistant and cheerleader for the Las Vegas Raiders, and a business consultant for women entrepreneurs who has graced the covers of several national magazines. The list goes on.
For the Rev. Perry, history is important because the past is all about the future.
“A big piece of Marble Falls history has barely been told,” he said. “We’re trying to make it known that everybody had a part in building this community. It’s to make everything known across the board so that we can continue to work together to make this a better place.”