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Consumer Bulletin CONSUMER BULLETIN FROM THE OFFICE OF FLORIDA ATTORNEY GENERAL CHARLIE CRIST DECEMBER 2005-JANUARY 2006 On December 21, 2004, Attorney General Charlie Remembering Crist ordered that the case be reopened, with the goal of bringing justice to Harry T. Harry T. Moore Moore and his family. Attorneys and investigators When Harry T. Moore’s house was blown up by a are combing through bomb, leaving him dying on the bare earth in a evidence in hopes of finally wreckage of floorboards, his friends could not call an identifying the perpetrators. ambulance to take him to a hospital. Along with the creation of a cultural center at Moore’s Ambulances were only for white people. home, the investigation is At the time, discrimination against blacks was helping to restore Moore’s blatant and vicious. In 1951, many Florida rightful legacy as a leading politicians boasted of ties to whites-only hate opponent of discrimination. groups. The Ku Klux Klan openly held marches Investigators recently and rallies. Murders and bombings directed at excavated below the house, blacks, Jews and labor organizers were practically seeking clues about the common occurrences. bomb. If it was dynamite, Still, the murder of Harry T. Moore sent out the murder may be linked to Murdered 54 years ago four suspects who were shockwaves. Congressman John F. Kennedy this month, Moore called on President Harry Truman to launch a devoted his life to fighting heavily involved in Klan federal investigation. Reporters from across the racism and violence. violence. nation converged on the bomb site in Brevard At the time, the Florida Klan was in disarray, its County. The Soviet Union and other countries actions increasingly extreme, convulsed by the end denounced the killing. of an era. Legal segregation was in its death throes, Moore was the most prominent civil rights advocate thanks in part to Harry T. Moore. in Florida. Long before Rosa Parks refused to give Conditions for black people during Moore’s lifetime up her bus seat, or Martin Luther King declared that are practically unimaginable today. Not so long after he had a dream, Moore trolled the dusty back roads the end of slavery, blacks were relegated to the of Florida in his Model A, signing up black voters worst of everything in the rural parts of Florida. and speaking out against injustice. Astonishingly, despite one intensive inquiry after Public amenities were strictly segregated and, for another, the killers were never found. And as the black people, meager or nonexistent. Lawlessness case grew moribund, Moore himself was nearly was entrenched. If a black person was suspected of forgotten, a bookish man who toiled in obscure rural towns, a footnote of the pre-television age. SEE “MOORE,” PAGE 3 TURMOIL IN GROVELAND Did Harry T. Moore’s role in a notorious criminal case lead to his death? A monumental controversy took place in 1949 over the treatment of four black men accused of rape in the little town of Groveland, in Lake County. Many who knew Harry T. Moore believed that this uproar led to his murder. In July, a white teenage housewife named Norma Lee Padgett claimed the four men Moore’s house after the Christmas Day bombing. kidnapped and assaulted her after she and her husband asked them for directions. Doctors could not figure out if she had been raped or not. Among the accused were veterans of the recent World War, who stood out in sleepy Groveland because they continued to wear uniforms and refused to work as laborers in the orange groves. The local sheriff -- an ardent segregationist who later became of a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of White People -- organized a 100-man posse that tracked one of the suspects through the woods and killed him in an avalanche of gunfire. The others were severely beaten -- it was not clear by whom -- and convicted by an all-white jury after intensive pre-trial publicity, including boasts by the sheriff, Willis McCall, that they had confessed. Two of the three were sentenced to death, and the case became a worldwide cause celebre. Eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the convictions of the two condemned men. In November 1951, Sheriff McCall decided to bring Samuel Shepherd and Walter Irvin back to Groveland for a retrial hearing from the state prison in Raiford late at night on back country roads. Part-way back, he radioed the message -- he had shot both men dead! The news caused a sensation. Actually, Irvin was still alive and charged that McCall had forced both men out of the car and shot them point-blank. McCall contended he’d been jumped. Mob scenes and denunciations ensued, and Harry T. Moore called for McCall’s indictment. Moore wrote to Gov. Fuller Warren on December 2, 1951: "Florida Negro citizens are still mindful of the fact that our votes proved to be your margin of victory in the 2nd primary of 1948. We seek no special favors; but certainly we have a right to expect justice and equal protection of the law even for the humblest Negro. Shall we be disappointed again?" In the end, a coroner’s inquest exonerated McCall. No evidence links McCall to Moore’s death, but Moore’s prominent role in the case may have induced hatred in others that led to the murder. "His eloquence was getting him a lot of attention," says Allison Bethel, head of the Attorney General’s Civil Rights Division. "It was a pretty bodacious thing for a black man to call for the indictment of a sheriff, and it was a short time after that that he was murdered." “MOORE,” FROM PAGE 1 causes. He worked with the NAACP’s New York a crime -- or was just viewed lawyer, Thurgood Marshall, as not acting subservient to bring a test case to tiny enough -- the result could be Brevard, challenging the summary execution by white huge disparity in Florida thugs. between salaries for black These murders are often and white teachers. In called lynchings. But they 1939, the Florida Supreme took all kinds of gruesome Court ruled that the state forms besides hanging -- constitution did not require drowning, dismemberment, school boards to adopt burning to death with hot equal salaries. irons. In the early 20th But before long black century, Florida had more activists had a triumph. lynching per capita than any Marshall convinced the other state, including U.S. Supreme Court in Mississippi and Alabama. 1944 that Democratic Harry T. Moore, born in1905 Party primaries had to be in backward Suwanee opened to black voters. County, encountered racism Although literacy tests and early. In those days, little poll "taxes" remained public education was obstacles, efforts such as available to black children. Moore’s to register blacks Schools were often closed suddenly changed the down early in the year so Harriette Moore died of her injuries nine days political landscape. In after the bombing on Christmas Day. It was also 1948, for instance, the white school boards could her 26th wedding anniversary. spend money elsewhere. long-time political boss of Rural counties did not bother to provide high Brevard was booted out of office thanks to new schools. black voters. Moore’s parents, who ran a small store, sent their Meanwhile, Moore was tireless in speaking out only child to live with aunts in worldly Jacksonville. against mob justice. Whenever a black man was A sickly boy, he took to learning and at age 19 killed in questionable circumstances, as happened began work as a teacher in sleepy Brevard County. often, Moore would exhort officials to take action. In 1926, he was named principal of the Titusville When that approach failed to produce results, he Colored School. And he married Harriette Simms, would hire attorneys to investigate independently. with whom he had two daughters. Many people who knew Moore believed that his outspokenness about lynching led to his murder. Soon Moore was caught up in pressing issues of (See Groveland box.) the day, especially voting rights. To Moore, voting was the key to progress. In 1934, he founded the Christmas Day 1951 was Harry and Harriette Brevard chapter of the NAACP and, 10 years later, Moore’s 26th wedding anniversary. After an the Progressive Voters League. He devoted the evening at a relative’s house for dinner, they rest of his life to signing up members and voters. celebrated with some holiday fruitcake and went to bed early. The bomb that exploded under their In those days, the prospects for change seemed bleak. Black people were barred from voting in SEE “MOORE,” PAGE 4 Democratic Party primaries on the grounds that the party was a private club that could pick and Some of the information in this article comes (with permission of the author) from “Before His Time, The Untold Story of Harry T. Moore, choose its members. That party’s primaries America’s First Civil Rights Martyr,” by Ben Green, determined who would hold office because University Press of Florida, 1999. Republicans were a small minority. Other information about Harry T. Moore is available at http://www.pbs.org/harrymoore/harry/mbio.html Despite the odds, Moore took up a host of and http://www.nbbd.com/godo/moore/ “MOORE,” FROM PAGE 3 bedroom was so powerful that it was heard four miles away, so powerful that shards from the floor embedded in the ceiling. Harry died within hours, Herriette nine days later. The FBI initiated a vigorous investigation, concentrating on two men who had recently asked for directions to the Moore house, as well as a dozen other men -- all with links to the Ku Klux Klan.
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