Civil Rights 📍

A look back and forward at our country’s complicated relationship with Civil Rights.

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William L. Moore – A forgotten advocate for civil rights and mental health issues – Canadian Military History

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William L. Moore – A forgotten advocate for civil rights and mental health issues – Canadian Military History

On 23 April 2010, a memorial plaque was unveiled outside the Greater Binghamton Transportation Center bus terminal in Binghamton, New York, in honour of a mostly forgotten civil rights and mental health advocate who was murdered on that day 47 years prior.

William Lewis Moore, born in Binghamton on 28 April 1927, was a postal worker and member of the Congress of Racial Equality, who achieved a level of notoriety for staging lone protests against racial segregation in an era when few white people supported such causes.

Moore also became an advocate for mental health issues, a result of having been institutionalized for a year and a half after suffering a mental breakdown while a graduate student at John Hopkins University in the early 1950s. He would ultimately be diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia.

Moore staged lone protests by marching to capital cities on three separate occasions to hand-deliver letters he’d written denouncing the practice of racial segregation. His first march was to Annapolis, the state capital of Maryland, followed by a march to the White House to deliver a letter to President John F. Kennedy, on the same day that Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King was released from the jail in Binghamton following protests in that city.

A Postman’s 1963 Walk For Justice, Cut Short On An Alabama Road

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A Postman’s 1963 Walk For Justice, Cut Short On An Alabama Road : NPR

William Moore was born in Binghamton, N.Y., but he was not just another "Yankee" sticking his nose where many Southerners believed it didn't belong. Moore had roots in the South. Moore was raised in Russell, Miss., after going to live with his grandparents at the age of 2. As an adult, Moore returned to Binghamton and began organizing demonstrations for civil rights. He also became a member of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a vital arm of activism at the time.

If you drove down Highway 11 five decades ago, you might have spotted a middle-aged white man in rumpled clothes and coiffed hair, sporting a gap-toothed grin. You might have thought little of it and kept driving. But when you glanced back, you would have wondered why this guy was pulling a little red wagon, handing letters to people he passed and pushing a grocery cart plastered with a "Wanted" poster featuring an image of Jesus. William Moore definitely stuck out.

But there were people along his route who did more than wonder about strangers like William Moore. Mary Stanton, author of Freedom Walk, a book about Moore and others who continued his effort after his death, describes people who confronted him. The polite individuals interrogated him about his intentions; the rude threatened him.

Ultimately, Moore was shot twice in the head at point-blank range near Attalla, Ala. He was left on the side of the road at a picnic area approximately 300 miles short of Jackson. In her book, Stanton describes a frightened Willis Elrod, who stumbled over Moore's body when he pulled over to use the restroom.

Biden administration revives plan to put Harriet Tubman on $20 bill | US news | The Guardian

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Biden administration revives plan to put Harriet Tubman on $20 bill | US news | The Guardian

The US treasury is taking steps to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, as was planned under Barack Obama.

She Came to Slay: Tubman biography looks beyond Underground Railroad Read more Harriet Tubman was a 19th-century abolitionist and political activist who escaped slavery herself, then took part in the rescues of hundreds of enslaved people, using the network of activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad.

In 2016, Obama decided Tubman should replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, leading to celebrations that an escaped slave would be honored instead of a slaveowner president.