TARRANT COUNTY ROOTS
HISTORY & FAMILIES OF MOSIER VALLEY, TEXAS
Mosier Valley Texas was established in the early 1870's north of the Trinity River south of present day Hurst, Euless, and Bedford in Tarrant County. It was founded by Robert and Dilsie Johnson along with other emancipated slave families.The Trinity bottomland was given and sold to the freedmen by the Mosier and Lee plantation families. The newly emancpiated families establishd a close-knit farming community. Many of the families raised cotton and corn crops and maintained vegetable gardens, and raised farm animals. Many of the residents worked as handymen, sharecroppers, and nannies for the white residents of the Hurst, Euless, and Bedford areas. The Oak Grove Baptist Church was founded in the community in 1874 and also an elementary school in 1883. The Mosier Valley school was always in one of the Hurst Euless, or Bedford districts. One of the residents of Mosier valley by the name of John Calhoun Parker established a widely patronized syrup mill around 1900. Also around that time the community constructed a building that was shared by the school, church, and the Masonic lodge. The congregation of the Church changed its name to St. John Missionary Baptist Church and built its own building in 1911. The church still occupies the same location.
Between 1910 and the 1930's the Valley reached its population peak of about 300. There were lively bands, square dances, church revivals, and public festivals. Whites attended some events, though most of the racial mingling involved black and white males shooting dice and betting on cock fights. In August of 1949 the Euless school superintendent O. B. Powell attempted to transfer 46 local black students to "colored" schools in Ft. Worth, since bussing them would be cheaper than maintaining the ramshackle Mosier Valley facility. Mosier Valley parent, with the help from the NAACP, had the district enjoined. United States District Judge Joe Dooley observed in 1950 that Texas laws specified that students had a right to be educated in their own districts and that a district's schools were supposed to be funded on an equal basis. On September 4, 1950, Mosier Valley parents and 35 grade-school students entered the Euless school and tried to enroll. A crowd of some 150 whites gathered outside, harrased the photographers, and jeered as the black students later filed out Powell had informed the blacks that state segregation laws took precedence over all others. Segregation lingered, served by a new Mosier Valley school closed and the Euless district was fully integrated. In 1983 the Texas Historical Commission placed a marker at the site of the old Moser Valley school on Mosier Valley Road.
The anticipated construction of what is now Dallas-Ft.Worth International Airport in 1960 caused Fort Worth to extend its boundries to the east( to reach the site)in a strip of land that included Mosier Valley. In the early 1990's the remaining 150 or so residents of the Valley were surrounded by gravel pits and machine shops, and many families still relied on well water and septic tanks. In 1994 Trinity Boulevard, a six-lane, fullyaccessible highway, was planned to pass through Mosier Valley, then a residential community within Ft. Worth.*
George N. Green
* This information was taken from the Handbook of Texas Online website
