Black History Month: Harry T. Moore
When you think about leaders of the civil rights movement, the first names that come to mind may be Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, or John Lewis. But they didn’t fight that fight alone. This week, btw takes a look at another civil rights leader whose contributions are just as important. Harry T. Moore was a voting rights and anti-lynching activist whose efforts eventually cost him his life.
Who Was Harry T. Moore?
Harry T. Moore lived in a small town called Mims, Florida. He and his wife, Harriette, were both teachers in segregated public schools. Moore began his civil rights work in the 1930s. He helped lay the groundwork for what we think of as the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. He is considered Florida’s first civil rights leader.
Moore organized the first branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in his county and served as its president. In 1945, he and other NAACP leaders founded the Progressive Voter’s League, which registered more than 100,000 African American voters in Florida. Moore was the group’s president, and both he and Henriette lost their teaching jobs a year later because of their activism. Moore also fought to pass anti-lynching legislation and to raise awareness of race-based violence against African Americans. At the time, Florida had the highest number of lynchings per capita in the nation. Moore received national attention for his efforts to bring justice for several Florida lynching victims.
Dangerous Work
Fighting for voting rights and anti-lynching legislation was a dangerous task for Moore to take on. In the 1940s, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) held marches on Election Day to intimidate voters of color. In 1951, national newspapers wrote about the “Florida Terror,” a string of bombings that targeted African American homes and places of worship. The bombings also targeted businesses (even white-owned ones) that served people of color.
Moore himself was killed when white supremacists bombed his home on Christmas Day in 1951. His wife passed away because of her injuries nine days later. Their daughter, who was also home at the time, survived.
Who Killed Harry Moore?
No one was ever charged with the murders of Harry and Henrietta Moore, despite FBI and grand jury investigations. But years later, in 2005, Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist was running for Florida governor. He reopened Moore’s case. As a result, four members of the KKK were named for the murders. But all four of them were deceased. While evidence suggests that they were involved, no one knows for sure if they were the ones who actually committed the crime. As a result, it’s unlikely that the mystery of the Moores’ murders will ever be solved.