Harry T. Moore (1905–1951) was a pioneering civil rights leader in Florida and one of the earliest leaders of the modern Civil Rights Movement. On December 25, 1951, a bomb exploded beneath the Moores’ home in Central Florida, fatally injuring Moore and his wife, Harriette V. Moore. Their deaths placed them among the earliest martyrs of the modern civil rights era. Moore’s contributions to the movement were significantly shaped by his time in Jacksonville. The following four sites are connected to Harry T. Moore’s experiences in Jacksonville.
1. UF Health parking lot, 720 W. 8th St.
Harry Tyson Moore was born on November 18, 1905, to Johnny and Rosa Moore in the small town of Houston, Florida. Located in Suwannee County, the community was home to his father’s work tending water tanks for the Seaboard Air Line Railroad, in addition to operating a small store out of the front of their house. Tragedy struck in 1914 when his father passed away. Afterward, Rosa Moore supported the family by working in the cotton fields and managing the store, eventually sending Harry to live with one of her sisters in Daytona Beach.
In 1916, Harry moved to Jacksonville to live with his maternal aunts, Jessie, Adrianna and Masie Tyson. Jessie worked as a nurse, while Adrianna and Masie were teachers. The family lived at 2002 Louisiana (now Jupiter) St. in the Sugar Hill neighborhood. Their two-story wood-frame duplex stood across the street from Darnell-Cookman Elementary School (Public School No. 45), on the northwest corner of Louisiana and Arch streets. The home was later razed along with much of the surrounding Sugar Hill neighborhood. Today, the former residence site is a surface parking lot at 720 W. 8th St., owned by UF Health Jacksonville.
2. Old Stanton High School, 521 W. Ashley St.
Moore’s years in Jacksonville were his most formative. Jacksonville. with its large Black community with a proud tradition of independence and intellectual achievement, proved to be pivotal to his racial and political awakening, according to his daughter.
While living in Jacksonville, Harry attended Stanton High School in LaVilla. Designated to the National Register in 1983, Stanton was Florida’s first official school for African Americans. Opened in 1869, the school was named in honor of Gen. Edwin McMasters Stanton, an outspoken abolitionist and secretary of war under President Lincoln during the Civil War. In 1877, President Ulysses Grant visited the school during a tour of Florida. During the visit, a 6-year-old student named James Weldon Johnson raised his hand from the crowd and Grant shook it. Johnson would go on to become the school’s principal in 1894 and expanded it to become the only high school for African Americans in the city…