Community History Workshop Series (February): Preserving Our Past

Presented in conjunction with The Center for Texas Studies at TCU, these workshops are aimed at increasing the historical awareness of the community. The series is designed to make the public aware of the important, yet often overlooked historical resources around them, and how to preserve them for posterity. The goal of the workshops is to prove that “every person is a historian,” and that they can, by their deeds and actions, preserve a small part of the cultural and historical fabric of this region.

February's program is "I. M. Terrell: How a Handful of Graduates from One Black High School Changed Music History" presented by Tom Reynolds, Musician and More.

In commemoration of Black History Month, don’t miss this opportunity to learn about the outstanding musical legacy of Fort Worth’s I. M. Terrell High School. Now an academy for STEM and Visual Performing Arts education, I. M Terrell opened in 1882 as the city's first black school during the era of formal racial segregation. Under the leadership of director G. A. Baxter, the music program trained many students who would become influential jazz and rhythm & blues performers of the twentieth century including Ornette Coleman, King Curtis, Dewey Redman, Ronald Shannon Jackson, Cornell Dupree and others.
For many years speaker Tom Reynolds, a fellow musician has studied and preserved the musical history of I. M. Terrell through documents, musical recordings, oral interviews. Fort Worth native Tom Reynolds took up the guitar at age twelve and electric bass at fifteen and never looked back. Having studied with the great jazz guitarist Jim Hall as a teen, he went on to study at Berklee College of Music in Boston and Hampshire College in Amherst, MA. After returning to Fort Worth, Reynolds played in the house band at the famous Blue Bird Night Club in Como backing blues singer Robert Ealey. He has since performed with numerous singers and musicians primarily in Texas and California including John Raitt, Smokey Robinson, Steve Miller, Wilford Brimley, and Doyle Bramhall. Reynolds can be heard regularly at the Kimbell Art Museum, the Modern Art Museum, and other Fort Worth venues.

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