Ivory Moore
Ivory Moore was born in 1924. He died on Aug. 1, 2014. Moore was the first Black administrator at the recently integrated East Texas State University, where he served as the director of minority affairs. Moore was also Commerce’ s first Black mayor and was responsible for many major improvements for the Black community on campus and throughout the Commerce’ s( historically Black) Norris community.
At ET, Moore also established TRiO programs, which aim to offer improved educational opportunities to students from low-income families, whose parents didn’ t attend college, or are from rural communities.
As mayor and as an involved member of the Commerce community, Moore worked on improving streets, plumbing, phone service and police service in the Norris community.
Rev. Charles Faulkner
Charles Faulkner has served the Greenville community as a teacher and a pastor since 1966.
Charles Faulkner was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on Sept. 16, 1944, and grew up in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. After graduating from Dubois High School in 1962, Faulkner attended Jarvis Christian College in Hawkins, Texas, where he graduated in 1966 with a bachelor’ s degree in elementary education and two minors in religion and history. In 1971, Faulkner earned a master’ s degree in sociology from East Texas State University and earned multiple certifications in the teaching field. He received his master of Divinity degree from Houston Graduate School of Theology in 1987.
In Greenville ISD, Faulkner worked as a fifth-grade teacher at Booker T. Washington High School from 1966 through 1967 and then as a sixth-grade teacher at Crockett Elementary from 1967 through 1982. After working for 48 years at many other schools in Texas, Faulkner retired from teaching full-time but remained involved with students as a substitute teacher.
As a pastor, Faulkner served at Clark Street Church from 1968 to 1984, then at Center Point Christian Church from 2004 through 2007. Faulkner later founded the Rising Star Christian Church-Disciples of Christ in Greenville, Texas, in 2008.
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