MIMS – Nearly 73 years after a bomb under a bed in Mims killed Harry and Harriette Moore and ushered in a new era in the civil rights movement, students, teachers and civic leaders will hold a special day in the couple’s honor.
The opening day, named for the slain couple — who founded the Brevard County chapter of the NAACP in 1934 and traveled the state registering voters — will take place Monday at the Harry T. & Harriette V. Moore Cultural Center and Museum at 2180 Freedom Avenue in Mims.
Bronze busts of the Moores by sculptor Barry S. Anderson stand among Peter Olsen’s portraits of the early civil rights activists.
“Harry and Harriette Moore’s commitment to civil rights left an indelible mark on our state and nation,” said Sonya Mallard, Remembrance Cultural Center coordinator. “By establishing a day of remembrance, we honor their sacrifices and remind ourselves of the ongoing fight for equality.”
The Moores, graduates of Bethune Cookman College in Daytona, worked as teachers during an era when blacks were targeted by white gangs in cities like Rosewood and Ocoee. Lynchings of blacks continued across the state, where segregation was the rule of law, with the Ku Klux Klan and sympathizers holding trials at numerous city halls and law enforcement agencies, historians said.
However, the couple became increasingly vocal, organized, and kept in direct contact with other national civil rights leaders of the time.
Then, on the evening of Christmas Day 1951, a bomb exploded under the Moores’ bed in their one-story wooden house in the Mims orange groves. It was their 25th wedding anniversary. The resulting explosion killed Harry Moore that night and seriously injured his wife, who lived for several days before dying from her injuries.
The couple – whose murders made international news – became the first martyrs of the modern civil rights movement, just three years before the historic Brown vs. Board decision of the U.S. Supreme Court and four years before a young preacher named Martin Luther King Jr. arrived. on the national stage with a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.
Visitors tour a replica of the Moore house at the Moore Cultural Center and Museum in Mims.
Each year the couple is honored with graveside services hosted by the state and local NAACP. But this year there will be no memorial service at the grave. A memorial in the couple’s honor was successfully promoted in the Legislature in 2018 by Sen. Dorothy Hukill, R-Port Orange, and Rep. Patrick Henry, D-Daytona Beach.
The Moore Cultural Center and Museum – which contains a full-size replica of the house the Moores lived in – will begin the memorial Monday from 10 a.m. to noon, and then from 2 to 4 p.m. Visitors can walk home through the replica, and also view the exhibitions in the main cultural center complex.
Students, community leaders, teachers and others are expected to attend Monday.
JD Gallop is a criminal justice/breaking news reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Gallop at 321-917-4641 or jdgallop@floridatoday.com.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Mim’s civil rights martyrs honored with special memorial
