Alice Moore, a scion of Black society and a longtime educator in West Palm Beach, walked with a newspaper reporter in 1980 searching for her family’s plot at Evergreen Cemetery, the original segregated resting place for many of the city’s pioneers.
As they walked, Moore was aghast to see the grave of Molly Holt, grandmother of Gwen Cherry, the first Black female Florida legislator, had been vandalized — her casket not only exposed, its glass top shattered, but it was empty.
Moore did find her adoptive father, Haley Mickens (1874-1950), a successful businessman…