William Lewis Moore

William Lewis Moore (April 28, 1927 – April 23, 1963) was a postal worker and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) member who staged lone protests against racial segregation. He was assassinated in Attala, Alabama during a protest march from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi, where he intended to deliver a letter to Governor Ross Barnett supporting civil rights.

Moore was born in Binghamton, New York and raised in New York and Mississippi. For a time before his death he lived in Baltimore, Maryland.

In the early 1950s, when Moore was a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, he suffered a mental breakdown. He was institutionalized for a year and a half with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. After being released, he became an activist on behalf of the mentally ill. He gradually got involved in civil rights activism for African Americans.

Moore joined the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE). In the early 1960s, Moore undertook three civil rights protests in which he marched to a capital to hand-deliver letters he had written denouncing racial segregation.

On his first march he walked to Annapolis, Maryland, the state capital. On his second march he walked to the White House. He arrived at about the same time that Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was being released from the Birmingham jail after protests in that city. His letter to President John F. Kennedy said that he intended to walk to Mississippi and "If I may deliver any letters from you to those on my line of travel, I would be most happy to do so."

For his third protest he planned to walk from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi and deliver a letter to Governor Ross Barnett urging him to accept integration. He was wearing sandwich board signs stating; "Equal rights for all & Mississippi or Bust".

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