On the recordFebruary 6, 2018
In honor of Black History Month, I first would like to take a moment to remember a hero of the civil rights movement in central Florida. Harry T. Moore was born on November 18, 1905. He was an African- American educator, a pioneer leader of the civil rights movement, and founder of the first branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP, in Brevard County, Florida. Harry T. Moore and his wife, Harriette Vyda Simms Moore, who was also an educator, were the victims of a bombing of their home in Mims, Florida. On that fateful Christmas night in 1951, he died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital in Seminole County, while she died January 3, 1952, at a hospital also in Sanford, Florida. Forensic work in 2005 to 2006 resulted in the naming of the probable perpetrators as four Ku Klux Klan members, all long dead by the time of the investigation. The Moores were trailblazers as the first NAACP members to fight for civil rights, and, unfortunately, were murdered as a result of their activism. Moore has been called the first martyr of the early stages of the civil rights movement. Mr. Harry T. Moore and Harriette Vyda Simms Moore, we salute and honor you. Saluting and Honoring Captain Keva Harris
