Lenora Rolla
african-American activist and historian
Lenora Rolla (March 4, 1904 – June 29, 2001) was an activist, businesswoman, educator, and historian. The granddaughter of former slaves who grew up in poverty, Rolla became a civil rights leader and community activist in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. In 1977, she founded the Tarrant County Black Historical and Genealogical Society, whose history museum is named in honor of Rolla.
Early life and education
Lenora Rolla (née Butler) was born March 4, 1904, near the towns of Palestine and Neches in rural East Texas, and raised by her grandparents in Neches until the age of five. Her grandfather, William Hall, was a former slave from Mississippi; her grandmother, also born into slavery, had been given as a wedding gift to a white couple who came to Texas from South Carolina. Lenora's father was a farmer and her mother, Amanda Hall, worked as a maid in Fort Worth, sending money back home to the family. Lenora spent the summers in Fort Worth with her mother until she moved there permanently in 1909, living in servants' quarters and helping her mother with laundry and ironing.
Rolla attended the Cooper Street School in Trezevant Hill, a historic African-American community in what is now Fort Worth's hospital district, and was baptized at Southside Baptist Church on Easter Sunday in 1916. In 1921, she graduated from the famous I.M. Terrell High School, the first public school for blacks in Fort Worth. She continued to work there as a substitute teacher, taking correspondence classes at historically black Prairie View A&M College and Bishop College.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 11, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q60321799. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1904, 2001, 1977 and 1909.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lenora Rolla” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.