In April of 1963,
a Baltimore postal employee set off to deliver the most important letter in his
life — one he wrote himself. William Lewis Moore decided to walk along Highway
11 from Chattanooga, Tenn., to Jackson, Miss., hoping to hand-deliver his
letter to Gov. Ross Barnett. Moore wanted Barnett to fundamentally change
Mississippi's racial hierarchy — something unthinkable for a Southern
politician at the time.
Historical marker
alongside Alabama highway will honor civil rights martyr William Lewis Moore
February 05, 2019
Jerry Smith was humming
along U.S. Highway 11 in his light-green, 1961 Chevrolet Corvair, when he came
upon something unusual.
A man was
walking alongside the two-lane highway, pulling a cart, and holding a sign. “I
stopped long enough to see that it was something about blacks one way or the
other,” said Smith, now 72, of Southside, Alabama, recalling the 1963 incident.
“After I had seen this guy, the next day we found out he had been murdered. And
it was pretty shocking. I had never seen anybody like that, who a few days
after I had seen them, was murdered. And it kind of had an impact on me.”
Smith – then a
high-school sophomore – soon learned that the man he had seen that day was
William Lewis Moore, a mail carrier who was walking from Chattanooga,
Tennessee, toward Jackson, Mississippi. Moore was on his way to deliver a
letter urging then-Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett to accept integration.
A portion
of the letter, which was opened later, read: “…the white man cannot be truly
free himself until all men have their rights.”
Nearly 56
years after Moore was assassinated, Smith is leading the effort to dedicate a
historical marker in honor of the civil rights martyr, along the same lonely
stretch of road where Moore was gunned down.
A
dedication ceremony for the marker will take place at 2 p.m. on Sunday, April
14, at the murder site, about a mile south of Keener Baptist Church. The church
is located at 5886 U.S. Highway 11 North, in Attalla, Alabama. Attendees will
park at the church and ride on a shuttle to the marker site.
The Etowah
County Commission is providing funding for the marker. The Alabama Historical
Association is overseeing the marker’s construction through a private
contractor. The SPLC is also contributing to the effort.
“Mr. Moore already has
a place on our Civil Rights Memorial, which names and honors people who died in
the struggle for civil rights,” said Tafeni English, director of the SPLC’s
Civil Rights Memorial Center. “We are pleased to contribute to this recognition
of Mr. Moore’s sacrifice, in the very same spot where he courageously gave his
life for the cause of equality and justice for all people.”
Walking protest
Moore was known to
stand up for his beliefs, even if that meant standing – or walking – alone,
which he often did. He believed that individuals could be agents of social
change simply by acting on their beliefs.
To make his point,
Moore, a member of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), used a tactic that
seemed natural for a postman: He walked to protest segregation.
During his walk from
Tennessee to Mississippi to protest segregation, Moore wore a sandwich board
that read: “Equal rights for all” and “Mississippi or Bust.” The other side of
the sandwich board read: “End Segregation in America” and “Black or White – Eat
at Joe’s.”
Moore also pulled a
two-wheeled postal cart containing a photograph of Jesus Christ, with the text:
“Wanted: Agitator, Carpenter by Trade, Revolutionary, Consorter with Criminals and
Prostitutes.”
Described as a
middle-aged white man with a gap-toothed grin, coiffed hair and rumpled
clothes, Moore came across a white storeowner named Floyd Simpson. A member of
the Ku Klux Klan, Simpson questioned Moore in Collbran, Alabama. Moore was
happy to explain his views to Simpson.
Later that
evening – on April 23, 1963 – Moore was resting by the road in Keener, Alabama,
when shots rang out at close range from a .22-caliber rifle. The bullets struck
Moore in the head and killed him. Even though ballistics tests later proved the
rifle belonged to Simpson, no one was ever indicted for the murder.
Within a month of the murder, 29 young people, carrying signs that read
“Mississippi or Bust,” were arrested in Alabama for trying to finish the walk
that Moore had started.
“This case
has great significance, and no one has really bothered to try to unearth it,”
said Mike Marshall, who is writing a book about Moore titled, “No Place for
Pilgrims.” The book title recognizes that Moore – who made several walking
protests against segregation – was known as “the pilgrim” to people in the
Civil Rights Movement.
Marshall,
who plans to attend the marker dedication ceremony and to mention it in his
book, praised Smith’s efforts to recognize the civil rights martyr.
“I think
he should be commended a good bit for all that he’s done,” Marshall said of
Smith. “I think that he has been a real driver in all this. I think his efforts
have been a big key.”
Back in the 1960s, when
Smith was a teenager, his father ran a hardware store. The father and son had
friends of both races – which was unusual during segregation.
“I
grew up playing baseball with several black friends,” Smith said. “But when the
sun went down, I went one direction and they went the other. We had a lot of
rednecks in 1963. We probably still do now. I never thought I was one of them.”
History recognized
Photo courtesy of Jerry Smith.
In 1963, soon after learning about Moore’s murder,
Smith drove back to the spot where Moore had been killed. Moore had apparently taken
rest at a concrete, roadside picnic table before he was murdered.
“He was actually killed at the spot where the picnic
tables were,” Smith said. “I went to that spot, to just stop and think that a
man I had seen walking was murdered there. I had a hard time wrapping my head
around that situation. I just didn’t think it was possible.”
For decades afterward, the murder
continued to gnaw away at Smith.
A few months ago, Smith thought to
himself, “It really was kind of appalling to me that there was not a historical
marker.”
He made several calls to Montgomery, the state
capital, looking for the person who was responsible for erecting a historical
marker. After many calls and emails, he got in touch with the Alabama
Historical Association.
The historical association told him that if he wanted
a marker, he would need to raise money for it – to the tune of about $3,000.
Once he had secured the money, he was told, the historical association would
oversee the marker’s construction.
But he did not have the $3,000.
Then, one Saturday, following a morning workout, Smith
shared his idea about the marker with two of his friends who also exercised at
the gym.
One of the men said that Smith would need to contact
the Etowah County Commission, whose district includes the spot where Moore was
murdered. The other friend suggested that he contact the SPLC.
Smith contacted Etowah County Commissioner
Johnny Grant, a retired Etowah County deputy sheriff who was very familiar with
the murder. Grant arranged for Smith to speak with the full county commission.
Funding granted
During a 10-minute presentation, Smith –
a retired Jacksonville State University dean and professor who has a doctorate
in education – convinced each of the six county commissioners to pledge $500
from their discretionary funds to the project.
Suddenly, he had the $3,000 he needed for the marker,
and the Alabama Historical Association went to work.
“We’re very pleased to have the request,” said Scotty
E. Kirkland, chair of the Historical Marker Committee of the Alabama Historical
Association, which has facilitated the construction of about 750 markers in the
state. “We typically don’t pay for the markers ourselves. We lend the
association’s name to the marker, we help them process, we fact-check.”
Some major historical events took place in
1963, Kirkland said. Among them are the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the
March on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have a
Dream” speech, and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church that killed
four little girls in Birmingham.
“In the course of all that happened in 1963, Moore
sort of gets forgotten about,” Kirkland said. “We’re doing more civil
rights-related markers, and we’re getting more requests for them, which I think
is a very positive sign. This is certainly one that’s deserving of attention.”
After securing funds for the marker and
convincing the historical association to have it constructed, Smith still had
more work to do.
He needed money for the dedication
ceremony – including a tent and shuttle transportation from Keener Baptist
Church to the now-empty spot on the highway where Moore was killed. At Smith’s
request, the SPLC covered the dedication-ceremony expenses.
“I never wanted to be a leader,” Smith
said
THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER, 400 Washington Avenue,
Montgomery, AL 36104
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence
Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001
[at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the
subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to
gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and
everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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