Ceremony Today Honors Civil Rights Pioneers
By Space Coast Daily // August 24, 2012
Preserving History
BREVARD COUNTY • MIMS, FLORIDA – A ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Harry T. & Harriette V. Moore Memorial Park Community Pavilion/Heritage Walking Trail and dedication of State Road 46 as the Harry T. & Harriette V. Moore Memorial Highway will be held at 4 p.m. today.
The event will be held at the Harry T. & Harriette V. Moore Memorial Park, 2180 Freedom Avenue in Mims.
The Harry T. & Harriette V. Moore Cultural Complex Inc. was organized in 2002 as a non-profit support organization for the park. It is through their efforts that grant funding was secured to design and construct the Community Pavilion/Heritage Walking Trail and additionally the dedication of State Road 46 as the Harry T. & Harriette V. Moore Memorial Highway project.
The Harry T. & Harriette V. Moore Memorial Park, location of the original Moore family home site, was purchased by Brevard County in 1994 and the Cultural Center was dedicated in April 2004.
The park honors the legacy of the Moore’s, who were parents, educators, and leading local and national civil rights activists. The Moore’s legacy is now scheduled to be displayed in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture which opens in Washington, D.C. in 2015.
Harry T. Moore organized the first Brevard County Branch of the NAACP in 1934 and later organized more than 50 branches statewide. On Christmas night, 1951, which was the Moore’s 25th wedding anniversary, a bomb exploded under their Mims home.
Harry T. Moore died on the way to the hospital and Harriette V. Moore died Jan. 3, 1952, one day after Harry T. Moore’s funeral.
The park is dedicated to the commemoration of their lives, to promoting awareness of their contributions to the early civil rights movement, and to preserving African American history. The Cultural Center is a repository of Moore family artifacts and historical documents featuring strategic events beginning with the Emancipation Proclamation ending slavery in America.
The park is operated by Brevard County, through Parks & Recreation Department’s North Area parks Operations.
For more information, call 321-264-6595.