JFK CONDEMNS MURDER OF CIVIL RIGHTS PROTESTER
Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) On April 24, 1963, President John F. Kennedy publicly condemned the murder of William Lewis Moore*, a postal worker and former Marine.
Mr. Moore became a civil rights advocate and marched solo seeking equal rights for all. His first march was to Annapolis, Maryland and his second was to the White House.
The third march was to be from Chattanooga to Jackson, Mississippi where Moore planned to deliver his letter advocating civil rights to Governor Ross Barnett. The letter included these words...
"The white man cannot be truly free himself until all men have their rights."
Seventy miles into the march on April 23, 1963, Mr. Moore's dead body was discovered in Attalla, near Gadsden, Alabama, along U.S. Highway 11. He had been shot twice in the head with a .22 caliber pistol. Moore was 35 years old.
*William Lewis Moore (1927-1963) was born in Binghamton, NY & raised in New York & Mississippi. WLM was a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore when he suffered a mental breakdown. After release from a medical institution, WLM became a civil rights advocate.
SOURCE
"The 'Mailman Murder': The Death of William Moore (Gadsden, AL)," Civil Rights Teaching, www.civilrightsteaching.org/
