NEWS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 10, 2010

Contact--903-366-1767, shannon_carter@tamu-commerce.edu

Panel of Local African-American Leaders to Celebrate Black History Month,

Discuss History and Future of Norris Community in Commerce, Texas

[Commerce, Texas]--Tuesday, February 23, 2010, Texas A&M-Commerce and the Commerce Public Library join
with the Norris Community to continue local celebrations of Black History Month. A public gathering will be held
at the Commerce Public Library from 2:30-4:30 to honor the accomplishments of Commerce’s African American
community.

Existing within Commerce city limits since the 1890s, the Norris Community was home to the vast majority of
Commerce’s African American population for much of the 20th century. Not unlike other black communities
throughout the segregated south until integration in the 1960s, the Norris Community was the site for the all-black
Norris School and businesses (barber shops, grocery stores, restaurants) serving Commerce’s African American
citizens in the years before they had access to the shopping, entertainment, and schools serving the white population.

Similar communities existed throughout the south until Jim Crow laws and customs gave way to integration in last
half of the 20th century.

Together attendees and panelists will explore topics like local responses to the civil rights movement, including the
integration of Commerce ISD and East Texas State University in the mid 1960s, and collective efforts like the
Norris Community Club (NCC) advocating change for local black citizens. The NCC was established in 1975 to
provide “a clear line of communication” among Norris Community residents, the Commerce City Council, and
ETSU (now Texas A&M-Commerce), and lead to multiple improvements for the Norris Community and improved
opportunities for its residents throughout the decades until the NCC was reorganized in 2004 to take on new
challenges under the new name “the Progressive Community Club.”

Panelists include founding members of the Norris Community Club and current PCC members Ivory Moore, Billy
Reed, and Opal Pannell.

The celebration will include a multimedia presentation about the Norris Community, produced by the Converging
Literacies Center (CLiC) at Texas A&M-Commerce in deep collaboration with Special Collections at the university
library, followed by a reception sponsored jointly by Gee Library, CLiC, and the Commerce Public Library.

Also featured will be a short video highlighting archives made available in the A&M-C Digital Collections as part of
a state-funded grant for the university library’s HeirLoom Project--an effort to preserve local history by digitizing
relevant archives in collaboration with local libraries like the Commerce Public Library. This year, the project focus
is local African American history.

The Commerce Public Library is one of twelve partners in the project that covers the northeast Texas area. They are
currently in the process of adding their collection of the Norris community's history located in their local history
archives to the HeirLoom Project. This project is partially funded by a state of Texas LSTA grant through IMLS.

Contacts:
Shannon Carter, Associate Professor of English, Texas A&M-Commerce
Jim Conrad, Director of Special Collections, Gee Library, Texas A&M-Commerce
Cheryl Westhafer, Local History Librarian, Commerce Public Library
Gail Gordon, Director, Commerce Public Library