Harry T. Moore
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Harry Tyson Moore (18 November 1905–December 25 1951) was a teacher who founded the first branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Brevard County, Florida, and later ran the NAACP in the state of Florida. He and his wife, Harriette V. Moore, were killed on Christmas Evening, 1951, by a bomb attack; it was their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Moore is sometimes referred to as the first martyr in the civil rights movement. A member of the Ku Klux Klan confessed to the murders.[link]
"The most shocking terrorist act of 1951 took place on Christmas night in Mims, Florida, a little town east of Orlando. Harry T. Moore, a school-teacher and state director of the NAACP, died with his wife, Harriette, when a bomb planted under their house exploded. An FBI investigation turned up several suspects, but no one was ever prosecuted in the case. Almost forty years later, a former marine and Ku Klux Klansman told NAACP officials that he and other Klansmen had conspired with law enforcement officials to plan and carry out the murder.... According to a subsequent report from the Southern Regional Council in Atlanta, the homes of forty black Southern families were bombed during 1951 and 1952. Some, like Harry Moore, were social activists whose work exposed them to danger, but most were either people who had rfused to bow to racist convention, or were simply innocent bystanders, unsuspecting victims of random white terrorism."[Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South by John Egerton, p. 562-563]
Moore graduated from Florida Memorial College in May 1925, and accepted a teaching job in Brevard County. There he met and married Harriette V. Simms. They had two daughters named Annie Rosalea Moore and Juanita Evangeline Moore.
Soon after the birth of his daughters, Moore formed a branch of the NAACP in Brevard County, and later he helped organize a statewide NAACP organization. He helped to file the first lawsuit in the Deep South in an attempt to equalize pay between black teachers and white teachers. Although this first lawsuit failed, it led the way to other lawsuits which were eventually successful in equalizing pay.
After 1943, Moore also became involved in every case in Florida that involved lynching of one or more black people. He took sworn affidavits from victim's families and in some cases launched his own investigations. Moore won a major victory in 1944 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (Smith v. Allwright) that the Democratic Party's all white primary was unconstitutional. Next, he helped organize voter registration drives that resulted in registering to vote 31% of all black people eligible to vote in the entire state of Florida.
However, in 1946 both Moore and his wife were fired and blacklisted from teaching as retribution for his political involvement. This prompted Moore to be a full time NAACP activist.
In July 1949, four black men were accused of raping a white woman. A white mob went on a rampage shooting into and burning houses of the accused until the Florida National Guard was called in to restore order. Three black men were arrested and one was killed while purportedly resisting arrest. Their NAACP attorney, Franklin Williams, discovered evidence that the prisoners were brutally beaten while in custody and levelled these charges at the notorious Sheriff of Lake County, Florida, Willis V. McCall.
The three prisoners were found guilty despite questionable evidence presented against them at trial. Sixteen year old Charles Greenlee was sentenced to prison while Sam Shepherd and Walter Irvin were sentenced to death.
In April 1951 a legal team headed by Thurgood Marshall got Shepherd and Irvin's convictions overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court and a new trial was scheduled for them. While transporting the prisoners, Sheriff Willis V. McCall shot both handcuffed men. The Sheriff thought both men were killed, however, Irvin survived his wounds despite a lengthy delay in getting medical attention. The Sheriff claimed they jumped him while trying to escape. Irvin claimed that the Sheriff shot both prisoners in cold blood. Moore called for an indictment and urged the Governor of Florida to suspend Sheriff Willis V. McCall from office.
Six weeks later, Moore and his wife were blown up by a bomb that was placed beneath the floor of their bedroom directly under their bed. Moore died on the way to the hospital and his wife died nine days later from her injuries. Despite an extensive investigation by the FBI and two additional investigations, these murders have never been solved. Moore was the first NAACP official murdered in the civil rights struggle.
References
- Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South by John Egerton (Alfred a Knopf Inc: 1994) ISBN 0679408088. A history of the Southern men and women, black and white alike, who led the battle for civil rights prior to the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown decision.
External links
- ["Who Was Harry T. Moore?"] — The Palm Beach Post, 16 August 1999]
- [Harry T. Moore Homesite]
- [The Legacy of Harry T. Moore] — PBS website
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