Letter to President Harry. Truman about the Murder of Harry T. Moore.

In late December of 1951, a news story out of Mims, Florida, shocked the nation. The story contained elements of prejudice, discrimination, injustice, lynching, rape, bombings, and murder. The story not only made headlines across the country, but also the world. On the evening of December 25, a bomb was placed under the floor joists of the bedroom of Harry T. Moore, a former schoolteacher and the executive secretary of the Florida chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, while he, his wife, and daughter slept in their beds. Moore had drawn attention to himself through his civil rights activities, which included registering African Americans to vote, fighting against unfair labor practices, and exposing cases of lynching and police brutality. His campaign against what he believed was the wrongful conviction of three African American males accused of raping a white woman, known as the Groveland case, however, attracted the immediate attention of the Ku Klux Klan. Moore died as a result of his injuries, followed by his wife nine days later. He was the first NAACP official murdered in the modern civil rights struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]