Harry T. Moore: Biography from Answers.com

civil rights activist

Personal Information

Born on November 18, 1905, in Houston, Florida; died on December 25, 1951; son of Johnny and Rosa Moore; father a railyard worker; family ran a small store. Married Harriette Vyda Simms, 1925; two daughters.
Education: Attended school in Jacksonville, Florida; graduated from high school program operated by Florida Memorial College, Live Oak, Florida; graduated from Florida Memorial College with Normal degree, 1925. Civil rights activist; Monroe Elementary School, Cocoa, Florida, teacher, 1925-27; Titusville Colored School, principal, 1927-36; Mims Colored Elementary School, principal and teacher, 1936-46; founded Brevard County branch of NAACP, 1934; founded statewide NAACP chapter, 1941; extensive voter registration drives that raise African American registration to higher level in Florida than in any other state, mid-1940s; NAACP Florida State Conference, executive director, 1947-51; became involved in investigation of Groveland deaths of prisoners in custody, 1951. PBS documentary, The Legacy of Harry T. Moore, broadcast, 2000.

Life's Work

On Christmas night of 1951, Florida civil-rights crusader Harry T. Moore and his wife, Harriette, were killed by a bomb placed under their house, most likely by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Moore's name is not enshrined among those invoked when Americans confront their shameful history of racist violence. Students, even in his home state, rarely learn of his existence, and his name does not appear among the 40 listed on the granite Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, commemorating those who lost their lives in the fight for equality. Not until the late 1990s, when a book and a Public Broadcasting Service documentary investigated Moore's accomplishments and his assassination, did his contributions begin to be recognized.

Harry Tyson Moore was born November 18, 1905, in the panhandle farming community of Houston, Florida. His father was a railyard worker who operated a small store in the family's house. When Moore's father died in 1914, his mother sent him to live with a sister in Daytona Beach, and then with other sisters in Jacksonville. This branch of the family saw to it that Moore received a good education. Nearly a straight-A student, he graduated from high school in Live Oak, Florida, and then went on to college. Moore earned a teaching degree at Florida Memorial College at the age of 19, and later went on to earn a second degree at Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach.

Became School Principal

Meanwhile, he had begun teaching in the segregated black school system of Brevard County. At his first post in the town of Cocoa, he met his future wife Harriette, and the two settled in her family's hometown of Mims, near Titusville. Moore quickly advanced to become a junior high school principal in Titusville, remaining there from 1927 to 1936; after that he served as principal and taught fifth and sixth grades in Mims. Moore would remain an educator until he lost his job in retaliation for his political activities in 1946.

The cheery tourist industry associated with Florida in the public mind has obscured the fact that race relations in the state for much of the 20th century were grim. Between 1900 and 1930 Florida had more lynchings per capita than any of the other Deep South states upon which the attention of reformers was focused, and the basic elements of the long struggle for civil rights were late in coming to the state. The 1923 massacre of much of the black population of Rosewood weighed heavily on black residents' minds, and when Moore established a local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Brevard County in 1934, he was a courageous pioneer.

Avoided Segregated Theaters

A quiet man who simply refused to accept the disrespect that white Floridians heaped upon their black neighbors, Moore began with small, personal acts of resistance. He refused to let his two daughters work as maids, and he would drive 45 miles to a black-owned movie theater rather than submit to the segregated seating arrangements at the local white-owned outlet. Soon Moore began to think in terms of larger efforts. Well aware through personal experience of the disparity between the pay of black and white teachers in Florida schools, he urged the national NAACP to seek redress. The 1937 lawsuit that resulted was conducted by NAACP lawyer and future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall; it is recognized as a significant landmark in the battle for pay equity.

Although Moore and his associates lost their case, he began to understand the power of activism when it triggered a flurry of similar lawsuits in other Florida localities; some of these succeeded. Moore became more and more deeply involved in civil rights activities. In 1941 he organized a statewide NAACP chapter and became its executive secretary. He began to try to combat the state's still numerous lynchings, tirelessly writing letters to state legislative and law enforcement officials, and later acting as a one-man watchdog agency who conducted investigations and interviewed witnesses.

The NAACP won a major victory in Florida in 1944 when its whites-only Democratic primary was ruled unconstitutional, and Moore immediately moved to take advantage of this new opportunity to increase black political power. A gifted organizer, he stepped up the NAACP's voter registration efforts. Largely as a result of Moore's activities, black voter registration increased from a miserable 5 percent in 1934 to 31 percent in 1950--a figure that was higher than any other southern state. Moore distributed voter guides that rated candidates on their contributions to African American welfare. Well in advance of the registration drives that figure so prominently in the civil rights movement, Moore had become a powerful political force.

Such activities, of course, antagonized the violent terrorists of the Ku Klux Klan and their entrenched patrons in Florida politics. Threats against Moore increased, and he purchased a gun for self-protection. Things got worse in November of 1951 after two of four black teenagers in the town of Groveland accused of raping a white woman were shot by the notoriously white-supremacist sheriff of Lake County, Willis McCall. McCall claimed that the two had tried to overpower him and escape, but the sole survivor of the incident claimed that they had been shot down in cold blood. Moore urged that McCall be indicted for murder. At this crucial time, Moore began to come into conflict with the officially nonpolitical NAACP over his political activities, increasingly oriented toward Florida's Democratic party. He lost his post weeks before his violent death.

Eulogized by Jackie Robinson

Moore's murder was widely publicized and brought international condemnation. Baseball star Jackie Robinson led a memorial service attended by 3,000 mourners in New York on January 5, 1952, and a second memorial organized by the NAACP three months later drew 15,000 people to the Madison Square Garden arena to hear a commemorative poem by the great African-American writer Langston Hughes. Hughes wrote: "And this he says, our Harry Moore/As from the grave he cries/No bomb can kill the dreams I hold/For freedom never dies!"

Yet eventually memories of the murder faded or were repressed. Most observers attribute Moore's relative lack of renown to his having been ahead of his time. "Harry Moore had the audacity to do this work before anybody paid attention to it," Moore's biographer Ben Green told the Tampa Tribune. The dramatic events of the civil rights struggle of the late 1950s and early 1960s took place before television cameras that showed the world the ugly face of southern racism. Moore had the misfortune to die during the infancy of that medium.

The FBI, under the directorship of J. Edgar Hoover, launched an investigation into Moore's murder in 1952, and experts differ as to how vigorously the agency pursued the case. Biographer Green, quoted by the Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, concluded that although "a lot of people thought they just gave it a wink and a nod, which is what I assumed, [they] really busted their butts." Green names Orlando Klansman Joseph Cox, probably acting at the behest of forces angered by Moore's political activities, as the most likely suspect in his killing.

Journalist and Klan infiltrator Stetson Kennedy, however, pointed out in a 1991 St. Petersburg Times essay that the FBI initially suggested that the NAACP might have been responsible for the murders, investigated mourners at the Moores' funeral, and tried to influence the selection of both the judge and prosecutor for the grand jury that was finally convened. Moreover, Kennedy argued, these revelations could well have represented only the tip of an iceberg--all but 3 percent of the documents produced in a 1985 Freedom of Information Act request had been blacked out. Florida governor Lawton Chiles ordered a reopening of the investigation into Moore's death in 1991, but no arrests resulted. At this writing, the murder of Harry T. Moore remains unsolved.

Harry T. Moore
Born	November 18, 1905(1905-11-18) Houston, Florida, United States
Died	December 25, 1951 (aged 46) Mims, Florida, United States
Occupation	Teacher, civil rights pioneer
Spouse(s)	Harriet Vyda Simms Moore
Website [1]

Early life

Harry Tyson Moore was born on November 18, 1905, in Houston, Florida, a tiny farming community in Suwannee County on the Florida Panhandle. He was the only child of Johnny and Rosalea Moore. His father tended the water tanks for the Seaboard Air Line Railroad and ran a small store in front of their home.

Johnny Moore's health faltered when Harry was nine years old, and he died in 1914. Rosa tried to manage alone, working in the cotton fields and running her little store on weekends, but in 1915, she sent Harry to live with one of her sisters in Daytona Beach. The following year he was moved to Jacksonville, where he lived with three other maternal aunts: Jessie, Adrianna and Masie Tyson, all educated women, of whom two were teachers and the third a nurse. ^[1] His aunts had a strong influence on him.

In 1919, Moore began his studies at Florida Memorial High School. Over the next four years, Moore excelled in his studies and joined the baseball team. He graduated in May 1925, and then went on to Bethune-Cookman College, where he graduated with a Normal Degree in 1936. Soon after, he accepted a teaching position in Cocoa, Florida. Later, Moore became the principal of the Titusville Colored School in Brevard County; Florida schools were racially segregated. There he met Harriette Vyda Simms, (born on June 19, 1902). They married on December 25, 1926 and had two daughters, Annie Rosalea Moore (1928-1972) and Juanita Evangeline Moore (born in 1930).

Civil rights activism

Soon after the birth of their daughters, the Moores founded the Brevard County chapter of the NAACP, in 1934. Moore also helped organize the statewide NAACP organization. He pursued a variety of efforts for civil rights, including equal pay, investigation of lynchings, legal action against the all-white primaries, and voter registration in the face of discriminatory state laws. In 1937 he filed the first lawsuit in the Deep South to equalize salaries of black teachers with white teachers in public schools. Although this lawsuit failed, it led the way to other lawsuits that succeeded in gaining equal pay for black teachers.

After 1943, Moore became involved in reviewing every lynching case in Florida that involved black people. He took sworn affidavits from the families of victims. In some cases, he launched his own investigations.

In 1944 the NAACP won a major victory when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Smith v. Allwright that the Democratic Party's all-white primary in Texas and other states was unconstitutional. With the focus on voting, Moore led the Progressive Voters' League during the next six years in voter registration drives that succeeded in registering 116,000 black people, 31 percent of those eligible to vote in Florida. It was a major increase in black voters and the percentage was 51 percent higher than the proportion of blacks registered to vote in any other southern state.^[2]

In 1946, the public school system fired both the Moores and blacklisted them because of his political activism. Moore then became a full-time NAACP activist, increasing the membership in the state to a peak of 10,000 in the next two years. He also pursued civil rights justice. NAACP membership in Florida fell sharply after the national office raised the cost of individual dues.^[2] Later NAACP national president Walter White fired Moore from his state NAACP position because of disagreements over dues costs and the focus of his activities. The national organization wanted to concentrate on strategies to be used to wage legal challenges to segregation.

A Crime in Groveland

In July 1949, four black men were accused of raping a white woman in Groveland, (in Lake County, Florida) and held in custody by law enforcement. Rumors accompanied the case, against a background of post-war tensions resulting from problems in absorbing veterans into jobs and American society. In Groveland, a white mob of more than 400 demanded that the sheriff, Willis V. McCall, hand the prisoners over to them. McCall hid the prisoners to protect them. The mob left the jail and went on a rampage, burning buildings in the black part of town. The governor had to use the Florida National Guard to restore order, which took six days.

Three of the four black men initially accused were arrested and charged. The fourth was killed by a police posse after escaping and while resisting arrest. Despite questionable evidence presented against them, the three black males were found guilty. A sympathetic jury sentenced sixteen-year-old Charles Greenlee to prison, while Sam Shepherd and Walter Irvin were sentenced to death.

As Executive Director of the Florida NAACP, Harry Moore organized a campaign against what he saw as the wrongful convictions of the three men. With NAACP support, appeals were pursued. In April 1951, a legal team headed by Thurgood Marshall won an appeal of Shepherd's and Irvin's convictions before the U.S. Supreme Court. A new trial was scheduled.

While transporting the prisoners, Sheriff McCall shot both handcuffed men. He claimed that they attacked him in an escape attempt. Irvin survived his wounds. Shepherd died at the scene. Irvin later claimed that the sheriff shot both him and Shepherd in cold blood. Harry T. Moore called for an indictment against Sheriff McCall, and urged Florida Governor Fuller Warren to suspend McCall from office.

Murder

On Christmas night, 1951, Moore and his wife were fatally injured at home by a bomb that went off beneath their house. It was the Moore's twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Moore died on the way to the hospital in Mims, Florida. His wife died from her injuries nine days later.

Moore has been called the first martyr in the Civil Rights Movement. He was the first NAACP official murdered in the civil rights struggle. The murders caused a national and international outcry, with protests registered at the United Nations against violence in the South. The NAACP held a huge rally in New York, where the renowned poet Langston Hughes read a poem written in memory of Moore.^[3]

Although the state called in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to help the investigation, it was unable to bring any indictments against the suspects.

There were eleven other bombings against black families in Florida the year that Moore was killed.^[4] The risk to activists and any blacks in the South was high and continued to be so. According to a later report from the NAACP's Southern Regional Council in Atlanta, the homes of forty black Southern families were bombed during 1951 and 1952. Some, like Harry Moore, were activists whose work exposed them to danger, but most were either people who had refused to bow to racist convention, or were simply "innocent bystanders, unsuspecting victims of random white terrorism."^[5] For example, bombing was prevalent in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1950s, used by independent KKK groups to intimidate middle-class blacks moving into new neighborhoods.^[6]

Legacy and honors

Langston Hughes read lines written in Moore's honor:

Florida means land of flowers

It was on a Christmas night

In the state named for the flowers

Men came bearing dynamite...

It could not be in Jesus’ name

Beneath the bedroom floor

On Christmas night the killers

Hid the bomb for Harry Moore.^[7]

In 1952, Moore was posthumously awarded the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP, for outstanding achievement by an African American. Although the story of the Moores' lives receded into overlooked history for years, the late 20th century re-opening of the case provided a new appreciation for their work.

In 1999, Florida approved designation of the homesite of the Moores as a Florida Historical Heritage Landmark.^[8] Brevard County started restoring the site.

By 2004 the county had created the Harry T. and Harriette Moore Memorial Park and Interpretive Center at the homesite in Mims.^[9]

Brevard County named its Justice Center after the Moores and included material there about their lives and work.^[10]

Recent developments

The state returned to the case a couple of times but had been unable to file charges, since most of the men whom it suspected in the crime had died. In 1999 journalist Ben Green published a book based on his research of the case: Before His Time: The Untold Story of Harry T. Moore, America's First Civil Rights Martyr. His research had gone deeply into FBI files. His book was followed by a Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) show about Moore's life.

In 2005 Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist re-opened a state investigation of Harry and Harriette Moore's deaths. On August 16, 2006, Crist announced the results of the work of the state Office of Civil Rights and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Rumors linking Sheriff Willis V. McCall to the crime were proven to be false. Based on extensive evidence, the state concluded that the Moores were victims of a conspiracy by members of a Central Florida Klavern of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). The report named the following four individuals, all of whom had reputations for violence, as directly involved:

* Earl J. Brooklyn, a Klansman known for being exceedingly violent, was discovered to have had floor plans of the Moores' home and was recruiting volunteers. He died about a year after the attack, apparently of natural causes.

* Tillman H. Belvin, another violent Klansman, was a close friend of Brooklyn. He also died about a year after the attack, of natural causes.

* Joseph Neville Cox, secretary of the Orange County chapter of the Klan, was believed to have ordered the attack. In 1952 he committed suicide after having been pressed by the FBI during its investigation.

* Edward L. Spivey, another Klansman. As he was dying of cancer in 1978, he implicated Cox in the attack, and also claimed to have been at the crime scene in 1951.^[11].

The Moores' only surviving daughter, Juanita Evangeline Moore, joined former Attorney General Crist in the efforts to uncover the identity of her parents' killers. She is a 1951 graduate of Bethune-Cookman College and a retired government employee.

Citations

^ The Legacy of Harry T. Moore, PBS Website
^ ^a ^b The Legacy of Harry T. Moore, Official PBS Website, accessed 6 May 2008
^ "Who Was Harry T. Moore?" The Palm Beach Post, 16 August, 1999, accessed 6 May 2008
^ "Who Was Harry T. Moore?" The Palm Beach Post, 16 August, 1999
^ John Egerton, Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994, pp. 562-563
^ Diane McWhorter, (2001). Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution, New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0743217721
^ "Who Was Harry T. Moore?", The Palm Beach Post, 16 August, 1999, accessed 6 May 2008
^ Florida House Speaker Byrd's 2004 Tribute to the Moores
^ Harry T. and Harriette Moore Homesite
^ "Who Was Harry T. Moore?"The Palm Beach Post, 16 August, 1999
^ "Crist Announces Results of Harry T. Moore Murder Investigation", 16 Aug 2006, accessed 6 May 2008

References

Egerton, John. Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc: 1994) ISBN 0-679-40808-8. 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.

Green, Ben. Before His Time: The Untold Story of Harry T. Moore, America's First Civil Rights Martyr (New York: The Free Press, 1999)

External links

Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Memorial Park and Cultural Center — Museum, Historic Time line, Artifacts, Cultural Programs in Brevard County, FL
"Who Was Harry T. Moore?", The Palm Beach Post, 16 August, 1999
Harry T. and Harriette Moore Homesite
The Legacy of Harry T. Moore — PBS website
2006 Press Release, "Results of Harry T. Moore murder investigation", Office of the Attorney General of Florida
2006 Harry T. Moore Murder Investigation Details, Office of the Attorney General of Florida
Florida House Speaker Byrd's 2004 Tribute to the Moores
Murder of Harry & Harriette Moore, Civil Rights Movement Veterans
The Moores' Cultural Complex, Mims, Florida

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Harry T. Moore

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