Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church, founded under a brush arbor by former slaves in 1872, and who then built their first church out of wooden bakery boxes, has a long history pushing for civil rights reforms in Houston.
In 1942 Dr. Lonnie Smith, a black dentist from Houston and a member of Good Hope MBC sues the state of Texas which allowed political parties to run their primaries as whites-only "voluntary associations" (a kind of private club), effectively disenfranchising anyone who was not a member of the club -- meaning, anyone who was not white.
The US Supreme Court overturned this system in a landmark decision in 1944, ending whites-only primaries and opening primaries to black voters (assuming they could get past the Literacy Tests and other voter-disenfranchisement stratrgies used by majority whites to keep blacks out of the voting booth during Jim Crow.
The state historic marker at Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church reads as follows:
"GOOD HOPE MISSIONARY BAPTIST CHURCH
Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church was established by the Rev. Samuel Grantham. The pastor first held services in his own backyard before members built a structure out of wooden boxes. Because of its appearance, this first building was called a baking box church. In 1872, members formally established the church and erected a more permanent sanctuary in Houston's Fourth Ward. The church became an important place of worship for African Americans in Houston, and early members included former slaves. Since that time, the church has developed into one of Houston's leading community and spiritual institutions.
Several noteworthy Texans have been members of this church. The Rev. Albert Anderson Lucas is one of several prominent pastors in the church's history. He simultaneously pastored here and served as president of the local chapter of the NAACP. Dr. Lonnie Smith, another member, was the plaintiff in the significant U.S. Supreme Court case of Smith v. Allright, which led to minority voting rights in primary elections. Barbara Jordan, the first African American U.S. Congresswoman from the South, was also a member of the church.
Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church has continued in its service to the community through a variety of outreach programs. Over the years, the church has become an essential part of Houston's progress. The contributions of its leaders and members have had a positive impact on African Americans in the city of Houston and on men and women throughout the nation. (2006)"
A more detailed history of this important black megachurch in Houston can be found on the church's website here: (
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And more on this landmark Civil Rights decision can be found here: (
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"In Smith v. Allwright, Thurgood Marshall rose in front of the United States Supreme Court to argue that Texas’s Democratic primary system allowed whites to structurally dominate the politics of the one-party South. Specifically, the case presented the question of whether the Texas Democratic Party’s policy of prohibiting Blacks from voting in primary elections violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
The Supreme Court held that it did, explaining that:
The United States is a constitutional democracy. Its organic law grants to all citizens a right to participate in the choice of elected officials without restriction by any state because of race. This grant to the people of the opportunity for choice is not to be nullified by a state through casting its electoral process in a form which permits a private organization to practice racial discrimination in the election.
In so ruling, Smith overruled a unanimous nine year old decision in Grovey v. Townsend that held that the Texas Democratic Party’s race-based restrictions on voting in primaries was constitutional because it was not state action, and thus it had not been endorsed or authorized by the state.
The implications of Smith had far-reaching effects on race relations in the South. It was the watershed in the struggle for Black rights, and it signaled the beginning of the Second Reconstruction and the modern civil rights movement. The political and social advances of Blacks simply could not have occurred without the changes that came in the wake of the overthrow of the Democratic white primary.
Marshall characterized the ruling of Smith, which he considered his most important case,[4] as “so clear and free of ambiguity” that the right of Blacks to participate in primaries was established “once and for all.”
African-American voter registration vastly improved immediately following the Court’s ruling in Smith, causing Marshall to recognize the case as “a giant milestone in the progress of Negro Americans toward full citizenship.”
Within just a couple of years huge changes took place. The number of Southern blacks registered to vote rose to between 700,000 and 800,000 by 1948 and then to one million by 1952.
At the same time, Marshall cautioned that the work of ridding the country of racial discrimination in voting and other areas was not complete and foreshadowed the ruling in Brown v. Bd. of Education:
The collapse of the white Democratic primary, despite fond hopes, has not resulted in full participation by all in the political life of the South. But the story of the struggle to overcome this barrier is particularly meaningful today. For, if nothing else, it indicates the fate which awaits the ‘legal means’ which some of the Southern states have drafted to preserve segregated schools."