On August 16, 2005, five months after a fire destroyed the Mosaic Templars of America Headquarters Building, staff and construction workers uncapped the cornerstone and discovered a treasure chest of documents. Placed in the cornerstone by Mosaic Templars of America officials on May 18, 1913, these documents provide a view into the economic and social forces that led to the establishment of the organization in 1883 and its operation.
Known as the National Grand Temple to its members, the Headquarters Building served as a gateway to the West Ninth Street Business District in downtown Little Rock. Like Beale Street in Memphis, West Ninth Street housed black-owned businesses and served Little Rock’s black community during segregation. Some West Ninth Street businesses endured into the early 1960s.

Documents discovered in the cornerstone included a copy of The National and State Constitutions and General Laws of the National Order of the Mosaic Templars of America (date 1913), a document entitled “The History of the Temple” written by John E. Bush, and a copy of Shadow and Light: An Autobiography with Reminiscence of Last and Present Century by Mifflin W. Gibbs. In “The History of the Temple,” MTA co-founder John E. Bush wrote, “[the MTA officials] had permanently laid the foundation for the erection of this Temple, which in the concrete will belong to the National Order of the Mosaic Templars of America, but in the aggregate will belong to all the Negroes of America.” These documents shown below are testaments to Arkansas’s strong African American business enterprise.