In a blog entry at Black America Web, blogger Tonyaa Weathersbee writes about civil rights martyrs Harry and Harriette Moore, who were slain on Christmas Day in 1951. The only husband and wife to die in the struggle, they deserve to be honored for their various contributions, she writes.
Christmas of 1951 was anything but a season of peace for Evangeline Moore. And she’s still looking for peace today.
That was when Moore, who was 21 at the time, arrived home after a marathon train ride from Washington, D.C. to Mims, Florida to learn that her father, civil rights and NAACP leader Harry Moore, had been killed in an explosion on Christmas Day. Her mother, Harriette, had been severely injured – and she died nine days later.
Moore's parents — the only husband and wife to die in the civil rights struggle — are viewed by many as the movement’s first martyrs. Harry Moore, in fact, put himself on the fast track to martyrdom when, among other things, he confronted Florida’s white power structure about lynchings.
That took some serious intestinal fortitude.
Read Tonyaa Weathersbee's entire blog entry at Black America Web.