By Pat Bryant
Around 150 persons met on a recent Saturday in April to celebrate the 20 year development of the Harry T. Harriette V. Moore Cultural Center in Mims, Florida. Set in the heart of Florida’s orange grove region, the commemoration celebrated the lives of Harry T. and Henietta Moore. Their Mims, Fla home was dynamited Christmas night 1951, ending their careers as educators and fearless freedom fighters in the Civil Rights Movement. The Ku Klux Klan blast that killed them brought international attention to their Florida freedom struggles. The Ballad of Harry Moore was written by poet Langston Hughes, and sung by Sweet Honey and the Rock.
More than 50 years after the bombing, the publicly funded Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Memorial Park and Cultural Center was developed. The Moores were leaders in a Movement, that later killed Jim Crow segregation, which many racists are trying to resurrect today.
Among the attendees were Biden administration Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Cheryl Cambell, NAACP Chair Leon Russell, Florida Historical Society Executive Director Dr. Ben Botemarkle, Former Florida Senator Tony Hill, Bill Gray, president, and Gloria Bartley, secretary of the Moore Memorial Center, and Darren A. Pagan, the great grandson of the Moore’s, and Bobby Henry, the chair of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, and publisher of the Fort Lauderdale Westside Gazette Newspaper,
While commemorating the Moore’s lives and their Movement, there was a sense of urgency among those present that America’s Freedom Movement is in flux, and Florida’s political environment has switched back to the Jim Crow period.
Senator Hill, standing before the audience, took the hand of Assistant Secretary Cheryl Cambell just as Harriet Moore had grasped her neighbors hand while lying on her death bed. Hill repeated Henrietta’s last words holding Cambell’s hand. “Harry and I did all we can do. Now it is time for somebody else”.
Seventy-three years later these words brought new meaning in a nation debating whether to turn back to the days of more intense racial oppression of Blacks and people of color, workers, women and gays or whether to continue to build a more just society. Hill ended saying “life comes with voices. Voices leads to choices. And our choices have consequences.” Hill was commenting on the number of Blacks who did not vote in recent elections enabled conservatives to gain power over our lives.
The Moore’s commemoration came a day after hundreds of Columbia University students were arrested for opposing Israeli genocide of Palestinians and calling for the University to divest its stock holdings in companies doing business with the Israeli war machine. While the arrest and the Democratic and Republican parties support for the war in Gaza, Israeli genocide was not discussed, but was lurking in the background influencing what was done and said.
NAACP Chairman Leon Russell told about Harry Moore suing the state to equalize Black and White teacher pay. Moore also organized registration of 125, 000 Black voters across the state. “He was an organizer and that is what put him on the hit list”, said Russell. The White Democratic Party primaries excluded Blacks at that time. In the general election Republicans could not be elected. Although parties have switch identities, racialized voting remains with most Blacks now registered in the Democratic Party and Whites in the Republican Party. Most in the room seemed buoyed with anticipation that in Florida’s November election progressives, Blacks, latins and women will approve a state constitutional amendment that allows abortion; re-elect President Joe Biden; elect a Democratic Party replacement of Republican U.S. Senator Rick Scott. The Moore’s Center is a 501-C-3 tax exempt group which is limited from political engagement, and did not discuss these matters.
Russell says it is important to understand the Moore’s story because it is our story as he described segregated life including separate schools, of which Harry was a principal. Forces that would erase seventy-three years of racial and human progress, at least for now, are building strength.
Former Brevard County Commissioner Chuck Nelson contrasted community cooperation at the time the Moore Center was conceived and built and the present. Cooperation with government and community has decreased and we have a way to go to get it back, Nelson said.
Some described some bright spots toward human progress.
Bill Gray said a recent decision of the Brevard County Board of Education will bring all eighth graders for a tour of the Moore Center. Also he related that the National Civil Rights Museum in Washington, D.C. will include Harry and Henrietta Moore in the Museum. A children book is being written about the Moore’s. The event was filmed, the first step for the production of a documentary on the Moore’s life by filmmaker Cathleen Dean.
The Moore”s Center includes a replica of their bombed home and a 4,874 foot Cultural Center including key artifacts of the Moore’s life and the Freedom Movement, and 14 acres that includes 24 kiosk of key events and persons along a civil rights trail, a gazebo, and orange trees, highlighting Florida’s agricultural past, before tourism became King. The Center was funded by the State of Florida, the Brevard County Commissioners, and the North Brevard Park Referendum, and maintained by the Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Cultural Complex, Inc.
Darren A. Pagan, the Moore’s great grandson, suggested one way to get young people more involved in the Movement is for adults in the room to focus on youth they know and get them involved in the many areas of engagement that the Moore’s were involved.
Gloria Willilams Bartley told the group despite wokeism, “we have got to stay on the case…so that our great grandchildren and their children may keep this story going.”
Cheryl Cambell, Assistant Secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and also wife of businessman and U. S. senate candidate Stanley Cambell said she was the first Black woman to serve as in her role in the Biden Administration which got elected because Black people’s votes were important. She put a plug in for her husband a FAMU graduate, navy pilot who flew top secret missions in the cold war to defend against soviet aggression. She challenged parents to be involved as a means of showing children the necessity of civic engagement, especially voting.
Several talked about how to get young people voting. Many suggestions were made. Listen to young people. They have questions that need to be answered. One young man, Jordan Whitfield said youth can develop their podcasts to communicate ideas and strategies. Zharia Solis, the owner of Zone 30 on YouTube, had interviewed and published Coco Mayor Michael Blake, longtime politician who was at the commemoration.
Bobby Henry, chairman of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, and publisher of the Westside Gazette told the group “nobody can tell our story like we can”. Henry asked for information from Black community struggles so that his and other Black papers can publish them.
*Pat Bryant is a journalist, author, poet and longtime Southern U.S. freedom fighter
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