Florida Historical Markers Programs - Marker Detail

Description: Side One: Harry Tyson Moore was born on November 18, 1905, in Houston, a rural unincorporated community near Live Oak. He was the only child of Johnny and Rosa Moore. His father worked for the railroad and owned a small store in the front of their house. In 1915, after his father’s death, Moore left home and lived with aunts, first in Daytona and then in Jacksonville. In 1919, he returned home to enroll in Florida Memorial College. He graduated as valedictorian in May 1925 with a Normal School degree, and became an educator for black schools in Brevard County. His first teaching position was at an elementary school in Cocoa, where he met fellow school teacher Harriette Vyda Simms from Mims. The couple married in 1926 and had two daughters, Annie Rosalea and Juanita Evangeline. He later became a principal in Titusville. In 1934, Moore entered the spotlight when he founded the Brevard County chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and his efforts led to the formation of 50 NAACP branches in Florida. In 1937, he filed the first lawsuit in the South to call for salary equalization for white and black teachers. Moore lost that case, but it sparked similar lawsuits throughout the state. Side Two: Harry T. Moore organized the Florida State Conference NAACP and served as its executive secretary. He advocated for equality, focusing on teacher salaries, segregated schools, and the lack of black registered voters. By 1943, his activism had expanded to include lynchings and police brutality. He began collecting sworn affidavits from victims' families on every lynching that had occurred in Florida. In 1944, he helped form the Florida Progressive Voters League, which registered tens of thousands of black Americans throughout the state. In 1946, due to his public civil rights activism, Moore and his wife were dismissed from their teaching jobs, and he became a full-time paid organizer for the Florida NAACP. On Christmas night in 1951, Harry and Harriette were murdered in their home in Mims, Florida, when a bomb was planted beneath their house. The Moores’ deaths were the first assassinations of prominent civil rights leaders; the tragedy was one of the sparks that ignited the broader Civil Rights Movement in the United States. The renowned African American poet, Langston Hughes, wrote the “Ballad of Harry T. Moore” in honor of Moore. In 2013, the Moores were inducted into the Florida Civil Rights Hall of Fame.