Mt. Moriah Temple Baptist Church
Commerce, Hunt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Serving Commerce since 1896, Mt. Moriah Temple Baptist Church has been an influential and vital institution since its organization. The congregation has its roots in the Cypress District Association, which formed in 1872 to organize congregations and build church building across northeast Texas. The Rev. Henry C. Riley, a noted missionary evangelist and member of the association, worked with preacher and Wolfe city teacher James I. Gilmore in organizing the new church. Mt. Moriah Temple Baptist Church immediately began to serve the spiritual and social needs of the Norris Community, where most of Commerce’s African-American population lived. Church members have reached out to the community by providing food, shelter, clothing and medicine. The congregation has also developed youth and college ministries, focusing particularly on students from Texas A&M University-Commerce. The church served as a beacon of hope in the turbulent social and political decades of the early to mid-20th century, when the Norris community gained a reputation as a violent place. During the 1960s, the church played a vital political role by organizing voting drives and hosting candidates for public offices. The congregation established links with the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and many influential members of the city were members of the church; a number of Norris community streets are named for these individuals. Today, the congregation continues to serve the spiritual, physical and social needs of the Norris community and the city of Commerce.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in 1896 out of the Cypress District Association, Mt. Moriah Temple Baptist Church became the spiritual and social heart of Commerce's Norris community, where most of the city's African American residents lived. Members provided food, shelter, clothing, and medicine, and built youth and college ministries. Through the turbulent mid-20th century the church was a beacon in a neighborhood then known as a dangerous place, and in the 1960s it organized voter drives, hosted candidates, and linked with the local NAACP. Streets in Norris still bear the names of influential members.
Why it matters
Mt. Moriah shows how the Black church anchored community survival and became a base for civil-rights organizing and voter mobilization during the movement years.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Henry C. Riley
- · James I. Gilmore
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Blanton School
Wolfe City, TX
Built in 1923, Blanton School was one of thousands of schools for Black children created through the partnership of educator Booker T. Washington and Sears president Julius Rosenwald, who matched funds raised by the local African American community. Its design maximized natural light and ventilation, and its calendar bent to the cotton harvest so students could work the fields each fall. With just three teachers for seventy students in grades one through eight, it served Wolfe City's Black families until Hunt County schools integrated in 1965.
Douglass School
Greenville, TX
Established in Greenville's historic East Hill Community in the early 1900s, this was one of three schools for Black children during segregation, first known as the East Colored School. It was renamed for Frederick Douglass in 1928 when a new brick building rose, and it taught grades one through eight for the African American community. In 1930 Mary J. Morris became principal here—the first African American woman to hold that role in Greenville.
Site of the Union Stockade
Sulphur Springs, TX
During the turbulent Reconstruction years after the Civil War, a gang of outlaws in this area terrorized and murdered Black residents and harassed other citizens. In August 1868, Captain T. M. Tolman led Federal troops here to restore order, moved the county seat to Sulphur Springs, and, after an arson attack, built a fortified stockade that served as quarters, hospital, and jail. The troops withdrew and the post was abandoned in 1870.
Site of Bralley-Pendleton School
Honey Grove, TX
Honey Grove's first school for African American children opened in 1882 with twenty students and a single teacher, named for early superintendent F. M. Bralley. It grew steadily, split into separate schools and rejoined, and in 1959 was renamed for its long-serving principal, John W. Pendleton. When the town's schools integrated in 1965–66, the Bralley-Pendleton buildings were sold and torn down.