Harry T. and Harriette Moore: the Christmas-night bombing in Mims, 1951

At about 10:20 p.m. on December 25, 1951, a bomb exploded under the bedroom of Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore’s house in Mims, a few miles north of Titusville. Harry Moore, the Florida NAACP’s executive secretary, died shortly afterward. Harriette Moore died nine days later. Nobody was ever charged. In 2006 a reinvestigation by Florida’s attorney general and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement concluded that four members of Ku Klux Klan klaverns around Apopka were the likely bombers. All four were dead.

Who the Moores were

Harry Tyson Moore was born on November 18, 1905, in Houston, Florida, graduated from Florida Memorial High School in Live Oak in 1925, and later earned degrees from Bethune-Cookman College. Harriette Vyda Simms Moore was born on June 19, 1902, in West Palm Beach. Both were teachers in Brevard County’s segregated Black schools from 1925 to 1946, and Harry became principal of the Titusville Colored School in 1927. They had two daughters, Annie Rosalea, called Peaches, and Juanita Evangeline. Harry built the family’s three-bedroom frame house in Mims himself and kept a small orange grove.

In 1934 he organized the Brevard County branch of the NAACP. According to the state’s historical marker at the homestead, he served as its president for five years, led the NAACP’s Florida State Conference as president from 1941 to 1946, and then served as its executive director until his death; the attorney general’s report says that in 1946 he became the conference’s first full-time paid executive secretary. In 1944 he and colleagues formed the Progressive Voters League to register Black voters, since the NAACP’s constitution kept it out of partisan politics.

He also fought for equal pay. In 1937 he took the question of Black teachers’ salaries to the NAACP’s special counsel, Charles Houston, and in 1938 a suit was filed on behalf of John Gilbert, a Cocoa Junior High principal and Brevard NAACP officer; the report calls it the first such case in the South. Gilbert was dismissed after it was filed, and Florida’s Supreme Court ruled against him. The activism cost the Moores too: in 1946 the county didn’t renew either of their teaching contracts.

Groveland

The report identifies the Groveland case as one of the likely motives. Four Black men, later called the Groveland Four, had been accused of rape in Lake County in 1949. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the convictions in 1951 and ordered new trials, and while two of the defendants were riding in Sheriff Willis McCall’s car back to Lake County, McCall shot both, killing one and wounding the other. McCall claimed self-defense. Moore called it murder and wrote to the governor and federal officials demanding McCall be indicted. The FBI later cleared McCall, and the report says the FBI found no evidence linking him to the bombing.

Christmas night

The report reconstructs the night. Harry and Harriette were in their bedroom at the northeast corner of the house, which sat about 18 inches off the ground on wooden blocks. Their daughter Peaches was in the next bedroom, and Harry’s mother, Rosa Tyson Moore, in a bedroom toward the northwest corner; Evangeline was at home in Maryland. The bomb, most likely dynamite set off electrically, had been placed in the crawl space directly beneath the head of Harry’s bed. The deputy who arrived from Titusville told the FBI the blast had “torn the entire bedroom to bits.”

Neither Peaches nor her grandmother needed treatment. Relatives drove Harry and Harriette 37 miles to the hospital in Sanford. Harry died within a short time. Harriette died nine days later.

The investigations

The FBI investigated for four years. The report says more than 78 special agents worked the case and interviewed more than 1,500 people in five states, reporting daily to J. Edgar Hoover, and that informants inside the Klan were among their sources. No one was charged. The case was also investigated by the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office, the Brevard County state attorney and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist reopened it in December 2004. The case summary that resulted concluded that:

• FBI informants had heard members of the Apopka klaverns discuss killing Moore, and had seen Earl J. Brooklyn display a hand-drawn sketch of Moore’s house at a meeting, saying he planned to go back with some men to “re-case” it.
• Brooklyn and Tillman H. Belvin had been seen at a store asking directions to Moore’s house before the bombing, and may have driven the two cars used.
• Joseph N. Cox, who was running for Orange County supervisor of elections, killed himself the day after his second FBI interview.
• Edward L. Spivey gave six to ten “dying declaration” confessions naming Cox as the man who set off the dynamite, and knew “far too many details for someone who was not actually at the scene.”

The motive, the report found, appeared to be Moore’s voter registration work, his campaign for equal teacher pay, his NAACP and Progressive Voters League work, and his push to have McCall indicted. It also said that other people were involved in planning and carrying out the bombing. All four suspects were dead.

Where they rest

The Moores are buried in the LaGrange Mims Community Cemetery on Old Dixie Highway, the burial ground of Mims’s Black community since the early 1900s; the state’s 2003 marker there calls theirs the most noted graves. Their homesite, at 2180 Freedom Avenue in Mims, carries a 1999 state marker that describes two people “committed to help Florida’s Negro communities unite to form a collective identity.” Our La Grange page covers both cemeteries.

Further Reading

• Before His Time: The Untold Story of Harry T. Moore by Ben Green
• Florida: A Short History by Michael Gannon