Harry Tyson Moore: Civil Rights Activist

Harry Tyson Moore was born on November 18, 1905,He was the only child of Johnny and Rosa Moore. Moore spent the next two years teaching fourth grade at Cocoa's only black elementary school. During his first year in Brevard County, he met an attractive older woman (she was 23, while he was barely 20), named Harriette Vyda Simms. She had taught school herself, but was currently selling insurance for the Atlanta Life Insurance Company; they married on Christmas Day, 1926. Her family lived in Mims, a small citrus town outside of Titusville. The newlyweds moved in with Harriette's parents until they built their own house on an adjoining acre of land. Meanwhile, Harry had been promoted to principal of the Titusville Colored School, which went from fourth
Harriet has become such a worry for some of the white men they had to take certain “actions”.on Christmas night, 1951, a bomb went off beneath the house of Moore and his wife in Mims, Florida. It was the Moores' twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. They were fatally injured; Moore died on the way to the hospital in Sanford, Florida. His wife died from her injuries nine days later at the hospital in Sanford.Moore has been called the first martyr in the Civil Rights Movement. He was the first NAACP official murdered in the civil rights struggle. The murders caused a national and international outcry, with protests registered at the United Nations against violence in the South. The NAACP held a huge rally in New York, and in other cities, too. In many respects, the protests over the Moores' murders was a dress rehearsal for the civil rights movement. the moores played such a big role in the freedom of the blacks there was a song named after him called The Ballad of Harry Moore they sang the song at the fundraiser for him at madison square garden. All in all harry and harriet played such a big role in the freedom of blacks they went into histories as some of the most bravest and strong black