Harry T. Moore
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Born: | November 18, 1905 Houston, Florida, USA |
|---|---|
| Died: | December 25, 1951 Mims, Florida, USA |
| Occupation: | Teacher, Civil Rights pioneer |
| Website: | [1] |
Harry Tyson Moore (November 18, 1905–December 25, 1951) was a African American 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 for the state of Florida.
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[edit] Early Life
Harry Tyson Moore was born on November 18, 1905, in Houston, Florida, a tiny farming community in Suwannee County, Florida. He was the only child of Johnny and Rosa Moore.
After the death of his father in 1914, Moore was sent to live with his mother's sister in Daytona Beach. The following year he moved to Jacksonville where he lived with another of his aunts, Jessie Tyson.
In 1919, Moore began his studies at Florida Memorial College. Over the next four years, Moore excelled in his studies. He also represented the college on its baseball team.
Moore graduated from Florida Memorial College in May 1925. He accepted a teaching job in Cocoa, Florida, and later became principal of the Titusville Colored School in Brevard County. There he met Harriette Vyda Simms, and they married on December 25, 1926. They had two daughters, Annie Rosalea Moore (born in 1928, died in 1972) and Juanita Evangeline Moore (born in 1930).
[edit] Civil Rights Involvement
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.
[edit] A Crime in Groveland
In July 1949, four black men were accused of raping a white woman in Groveland, Florida. A white mob went on a rampage, shooting and burning up 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 purposely 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. The fourth prisoner, Ernest Thomas, fled the county and avoided the sheriff's mob until he was shot and killed afterwards.
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 McCall shot both handcuffed men. He thought both men were killed, but Irvin survived his wounds while slowly getting medical attention. Irvin also claimed that the sheriff shot both him and Shepherd in cold blood. Moore called for an indictment and urged Florida Governor Fuller Warren to suspend McCall from office.
[edit] Death
On Christmas night, 1951, on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, Moore and his wife were fatally injured by a bomb that was placed beneath the floor of their bedroom at their home in Mims, Florida, a little town east of Orlando. Moore died on the way to the hospital, and his wife died nine days later from her injuries. Moore is sometimes referred to as the first martyr in the civil rights movement, and the first NAACP official murdered in the civil rights struggle.
Posthumously in 1952, Moore became the recipient of the Spingarn Medal, which is awarded annually by the NAACP for outstanding achievement by an African American.
[edit] Recent Developments
On August 16, 2006, former Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist announced the results of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's extensive re-investigation of this crime. The report names four individuals who were believed to be directly involved. The results pointed to extensive circumstantial evidence that the Moores were victims of a conspiracy by exceedingly violent members of a Central Florida Klavern of the Ku Klux Klan:
*Earl J. Brooklyn, a Klansman known for being exceedingly violent, was identified as having floor plans of the Moores' home and recruiting volunteers.
*Tillman H. Belvin, another violent Klansman who was a close friend of Brooklyn, is thought to have joined with Brooklyn.
*Joseph N. Cox, another Klansman, was confronted by the FBI and committed suicide the day after his second interview with the FBI in 1952.
*Edward L. Spivey, another Klansman who, as he was dying of cancer, implicated his friend Cox and was apparently at the scene in 1951.
In December 2005, the final phase of the investigation into the murders of Harry T. Moore and his wife Harriette was launched by Charlie Crist, by initiating an excavation of the site where the Moores' house once stood in Mims, Florida.
The Moores' only surviving daughter, Juanita Evangeline Moore, joined Crist in the efforts at uncovering the identity of her parents' killers. She is a 1951 graduate of Bethune-Cookman College and a retired government employee.
[edit] 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 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.
- The most shocking terrorist act of 1951 took place on Christmas night in Harry T. Moore, a schoolteacher 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 refused 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]
