They Built a Church With the Man Who Once Enslaved Them
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 29 December 2025
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, after the Civil War, a group of freedmen outside Dallas built a church with help from the man who had once enslaved them. That man also worshiped there. White Rock Chapel would go on to survive a flood, resist segregation, and outlast generations of change. But decades later, it faced a new threat: real estate development. Donald Wesson, along with his family, stepped in to protect what others had nearly forgotten. Joining him is historian Judith Segura of White Rock Chapel, who helps tell the story of one of Texas’s most remarkable and enduring houses of worship.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.3 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:14.1 | This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. |
| 0:19.2 | In 2024, we took a trip to Dallas, Texas, and stumbled upon an amazing |
| 0:24.3 | story of reconciliation, faith, and resilience. It was our good friends at the Sumner's Foundation |
| 0:30.3 | who actually told us about it. Let's get into the story of the White Rock Chapel. Here to start us off is Donald Wesson. |
| 0:39.7 | Here also to tell the story as an historian Judith Sigora. |
| 0:44.1 | Let's start things off with Donald. |
| 0:46.4 | So you ask, what was the motivation for my family to get involved? |
| 0:59.1 | Yeah. to get involved. My son had discovered this church in receivership. |
| 1:04.5 | So he came to my wife and I and said that. |
| 1:07.9 | There are a number of individuals buying to buy what was a very valuable |
| 1:13.9 | piece of land, a corner lot in a neighborhood of multi-million dollar houses and knock it down |
| 1:21.7 | and this would be a tragedy. So I asked him what he had learned. And the story that he had learned was something |
| 1:31.1 | that needs to be touted. Now, many of us know that President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 on January 1st. |
| 1:54.0 | However, Word did not reach Texas until 1865. |
| 2:00.0 | It was a brutal environment. |
| 2:06.2 | Just imagine the circumstances under which the enslaved live. |
| 2:16.4 | Imagine that as parents, you don't have control over your children. |
| 2:24.3 | Imagine as a spouse, the husband has no control outside of what the enslaver does over his wife. |
| 2:32.2 | The wife has no control over their husband. |
| 2:35.0 | It took physical brutality to be able to hold individuals enslaved. |
... |
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