One of the newest parks in North Brevard is the Harry T. & Harriette Moore Memorial Park in Mims. The approximately 12 acre community park is the site of a bombing during the Civil Rights Movement that destroyed the home and lives of Hary T. and Harriette Moore. The park facilities promote Aftican-American culture and history, and serves as a center for social events. The Harry T. & Harriette V. Moore HOmesite Development Committe is funding the future construction of a replica of the homesite as well as moving and restoring the state's first African-American schoolhouse that was recently discovered on NASA property on the Meritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.
Harry Moore was born in Houston, Florida, on 18th November, 1905. After the death of his father in 1914 Moore was sent to live with his mother's sister in Daytona Beach. The following year he moved to Jacksonville where he lived with another of his aunts, Jessie Tyson.
In 1919 Moore began his studies at the Florida Memorial College. After graduating he became a schoolteacher in Cocoa, Florida. He later became principal of Titusville Colored School in Brevard County.
Moore established the Brevard County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) in 1934. With the support of the NAACP attorney, Thurgood Marshall, Moore led the campaign to obtain equal pay for African Americans working in Florida's schools. Moore also began organizing protests against lynching in Florida.
In 1944 he formed the Florida Progressive Voters League which succeeded in tripling the enrollment of registered black voters. By the end of the Second World War over 116,000 black voters were registered in the Florida Democratic Party. This represented 31 per cent of all eligible black voters in the state, a figure that was 51 per cent higher than any other southern state.
Moore's successful campaigns had made him unpopular with powerful political figures in Florida and in June 1946 he was dismissed from his teaching job. The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People responded by appointing Moore as its organizer in Florida. Moore was a great success in this role and by 1948 the NAACP had over 10,000 members in Florida.
In 1949 Moore organized the campaign against the wrongful conviction of three African Americans for the rape of a white woman in Groveland, Florida. Two years later, the Supreme Court ordered a new trial. Soon afterwards, Sheriff Willis McCall of Lake County, shot two of the men while in his custody. One was killed and other man was seriously wounded.
Groveland defendants Walter Irvin, Sammy Shepherd, and 16-year-old Charles Greenlee were convicted in 1949, and Irvin and Shepherd were sentenced to death. In April 1951, however, Irvin and Shepherd's convictions were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court; Lake County immediately prepared to try them again.
On November 6, 1951, while Sheriff McCall was driving two of the defendants, Walter Irvin and Sammy Shepherd, back to Lake County for a pre-trial hearing, he shot them, killing Shepherd and critically wounding Irvin. McCall claimed that the handcuffed prisoners had attacked him while trying to escape. Irvin claimed that McCall had simply yanked them out of his car and started firing. The shooting created a national scandal.
After the shooting Moore called for the McCall's suspension and indictment for murder. A month later, on 25th December, 1951, a bomb exploded in Moore's house killing him and his wife.
In his book, I Rode With the Ku Klux Klan, Stetson Kennedy wrote about the murder of his friend, Harry T. Moore, on 25th December, 1951.
Terrorists planted a bomb under the bedroom of Mr. and Mrs. Harry T. Moore, Negro residents of Mims, a small town north of Miami. Moore was killed instantly. His wife died after a week of suffering. Even though Mrs. Moore said she had a "good idea" who planted the bomb, neither the local police nor Governor Warren's special investigator Elliott nor the F.B.I. bothered to take any statement from her before she died.
Although members of the Ku Klux Klan were suspected of the crime, the people responsible were never brought to trial.
Moore was a two-fisted saintly fighter for democracy, who throughout his life was in the forefront of the struggle of his people for a greater measure of justice. at the time of his death he was not only state secretary of the N.A.A.C.P. but also leader of the Progressive Voters League of Florida.
To calculate the final coordinates for the cache you need to do the following:
For the North coordinates, take the last 2 digits of the year Mr. Moore was born and subtract them from the last three digits of the North coordinates. Subtract the age he was when he died from this sum, and then add the last two digits of the year he established the Brevard Chapter of the NAACP.
For the West coordinates, take the last two digits of the year that Mr. Moore and his wife were murdered and add that to the seconds west.
The cache container is a tupperware container that has a log and pen and smallish trade items. Please rehide carefully.