Mims, Florida: Where Harry T. Moore Was Killed
Florida
Mims is a small community in northern Brevard County best known for a crime that was never prosecuted. Harry T. Moore was a Florida NAACP leader who spent the nineteen forties and early fifties organizing voter registration drives across Florida and demanding federal investigation of racial violence.
He registered more than a hundred thousand Black Florida voters. On Christmas night, nineteen fifty-one, a bomb planted beneath his home in Mims exploded. Moore died on Christmas Day.
His wife Harriette died of her injuries nine days later. No one was ever convicted of the murders. The FBI investigation concluded that Klan members were responsible but could not build a prosecutable case.
Harry T. Moore is now recognized as one of the earliest martyrs of the modern civil rights movement. A memorial park in Mims marks the site of the house where he and his wife were killed.
