Francine Morrison: Pioneering Gospel Singer and Pastor (1935–2016)

Mary Francine Reese Morrison, gospel singer and pastor, daughter of Luvenia M. Fleming (later Bostic), was born in Paris, Texas, on August 16, 1935. She had two brothers and one sister. Raised by her mother and grandmother in Paris, Francine Reese showed an early aptitude for music. She recalled that she played the piano daily as a child, “for as long as [her] mother would permit,” and started singing gospel songs at around four years of age. Around 1950 her mother moved the family to Fort Worth, where Reese soon started singing at the Rising Star Missionary Baptist Church on Evans Avenue. The church paid her $15 every Sunday to direct the choirs and play the piano during services. In 1953 she graduated from I. M. Terrell High School in Fort Worth and briefly attended Bakersfield College in California in 1953–54. The KNOK (later KHVN) radio station in Fort Worth recognized Reese’s talent, and from 1954 to 1955 she broadcast her own morning radio show, The Gospel Train. She was the first Black woman in the Southwest to become a religious disc jockey. In 1957 the radio station allowed her to begin broadcasting from her house. In 1956 she met Jury Morrison, a Fort Worth businessman, and they married on September 17, 1956. Together they had two children who lived to adulthood, one daughter and one son.

In October 1959 Francine Morrison sang for Martin Luther King, Jr., at the Majestic Theatre on his only visit to Fort Worth. In 1964 she was involved in the formation of the Fort Worth chapter of King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. After the assassination of King in 1968, Morrison sang “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” at a Fort Worth memorial service. In the early 1960s she was discovered by Gwendolyn Cooper Lightner, accompanist for prominent gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, while they were both performing at a benefit for disabled children in Los Angeles. Morrison went on to sing alongside Jackson, with whom she was frequently compared, and was invited by Lightner to perform as a soloist for a 1,000-person choir in Los Angeles. Throughout her career, Morrison performed with other famous gospel singers and groups, including Ethel Waters, James Cleveland, and the Blackwood Quartet.

During the 1960s Morrison broke racial barriers with her music. She became the first Black soloist to perform at a Texas Democratic convention in 1962 and was the first Black person to participate in a Texas governor’s inauguration when she sang Battle Hymn of the Republic at John Connally’s 1963 inauguration. She was also the first solo artist to perform at the newly-constructed Astrodome in Houston in 1965 and helped dedicate the Fort Worth Convention Center in 1968. Morrison also performed gospel and patriotic songs at events for such luminaries as presidential nominees George McGovern and Ross Perot, Jesse Jackson, speaker of the House Jim Wright, and Texas gubernatorial candidate Don Yarborough.

Proclaimed “God’s Ambassador of Song,” Morrison toured throughout the United States and internationally while avoiding nightclubs or any other venues that she felt contradicted her Christian values. For a number of years she conducted annual evangelical tours of Mexico. In 1968 she embarked on her most notable international tour, which took her to England, Europe, and Israel and included performances in the Soviet Union at Moscow’s Central Baptist Church, the city’s only Protestant church. She claimed that only the spread of “religious feeling” could heal a “world torn apart by wars and racial troubles.” Due to her representation of Fort Worth overseas, the Press Club of Fort Worth named Morrison the top female Newsmaker of the Year in 1969. She was the first Black person honored with this award.

In 1972 Morrison hosted a television program, the Francine Morrison Show, on KBFI-TV (Channell 33), which featured “gospel music, interviews and prayer time.” Later that decade she conducted another radio program, “His Time With Us,” on Sunday afternoons. She recorded four albums throughout her career—In Times Like These (1965), Sweet Sweet Spirit (1972), Standing on the Promises (1974), and Rise and Be Healed (1974).

In 1966 Morrison received an honorary doctor of sacred music from the Union Baptist Theological Seminary in Houston. In 1969 she received an ordination from the Abundant Life Temple in Coffeyville, Kansas. Four years later she was ordained again by Rev. W. V. Grant of Souls’ Harbor Church in Dallas. Morrison received her doctor of divinity from the International Deliverance Church in Dallas in 1975 and founded an interdenominational, interracial church called the Everywhere Church, which operated out of her living room in 1980. A few years later the church, which featured female-led worship, moved into a storefront location. In early 1990 the church disbanded. Morrison had been the main pastor for nine years.

Morrison was heavily involved in philanthropy and civic life in Fort Worth. During her life, she made frequent visits to the Gatesville State School For Boys, where she sang with the children and held an annual concert. She also performed at Tarrant County United Fund events. She was a board member of the Panther City Communications Group and a member of the Women’s Committee of the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce.

In 2001 Morrison’s health began to decline, and she moved to the Huguley Nursing Center due to sciatica problems that kept her in a wheelchair. On July 23, 2016, Francine Morrison, at the age of eighty, died after a long illness. She was buried at Skyvue Memorial Gardens in Mansfield. Because of her singing and philanthropic work, Morrison received several awards and honors in her lifetime, including the Ruth Roberts Award from the Black Women Lawyers Association of Tarrant County in 1991, being named Fort Worth’s Outstanding Woman in Arts in 1991 and a Living Legend by the Fort Worth Gospel Music Association in 1992, and being designated as a Dallas/Fort Worth Black Living Legend by the Junior Black Academy of Arts and Letters. On August 10, 1975, the city of Fort Worth celebrated Morrison by designating the day as “Francine Morrison Day” and presented a musical tribute to her at Will Rogers Memorial Auditorium. She was honored on numerous occasions by the Tarrant County Black Historical and Genealogical Society. Beginning in 1995 the Renaissance Cultural Center in Fort Worth sponsored the annual Dr. Francine Morrison Gospel Jubilee in her honor.