The ghost of Christmas past can be found inside a replica of the home that belonged to Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore.

Near the front window stands a Christmas tree with wrapped presents at the base. Christmas night in 1951, the Moore’s 25th wedding anniversary, was the last time the Moore family was whole. 

A bombing in the middle of the night changed all that.

Bill Gary, the president of the board overseeing the Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Cultural Complex, and others with the North Brevard Chapter of the NAACP helped reconstruct the Moore home decades after the bombing. 

“The blast was so explosive that the Moores were blown up to the ceiling and back down," he said. "The house was devastated

For Gary, being inside the space, especially close to Christmas, quickly brings up feelings of empathy for Evangeline and Rosalee Moore, the daughters who were orphaned following the blast.

“You can imagine your family getting together on Christmas night and a bomb explodes and kills your father and fatally injures your mother,” he said. “What a devastating, traumatic experience that must’ve been.” 

Harry died the night of the attack. Gary said Moore’s brother-in-law, and others who heard the explosion, rushed over to take them to the hospital.

He said they had to travel to one in Sanford because the hospital in Titusville at the time did not admit Black people at night.

Harry died on the way to the hospital. Harriette, lived for another nine days before she too succumbed to her injuries.

One of their daughters, Rosalee, was home during the attack, but survived. Her sister, Evangeline, said during a 2005 meeting of the Brevard County Historical Commission that she took a train from Washington D.C. to Titusville the day after Christmas, but didn’t learn of the devastation until she arrived.

“I did not know what had happened until I got off the train on the 27th and found a delegation of aunts, uncles, cousins, what have you, at the train station, but my parents were missing, so I knew something was wrong,” she said.

During the 2005 meeting, Moore said that getting to talk with her mom in the hospital before she died was a Godsend because it allowed her to not harbor hatred toward white people.

“I think I would be a very old, hateful, shriveled up woman if I had not listened to what she had to say,” Moore said. “Hatred does very, very bad things to you and I always said that’s what allowed my mother to remain — so that she could get me, particularly, on the right track.”

Lives of service

Both Harry T. and Harriette V. were educators in the Brevard County School System from 1925 through June 6, 1946, when they were terminated from their jobs for their activism. Harry Moore was principal of an all-Black elementary school in Mims and Harriette was a teacher.

The Department of Justice noted in a 2011 document about the bombing investigations that such firings were “a common tactic of intimidation used to silence those who fought for civil rights.”

Official documents housed in the Moore Cultural Complex state that the couple “resigned.” Museum displays note that “Moore had been previously warned by the Brevard County Superintendent to cease his political activities.” 

More than 70 years after that injustice, the current Brevard County School decided to correct the record. 

“In February of this year, the Brevard County School Board unanimously passed a resolution that publicly acknowledged that the Moores were unfairly (removed) from their school positions and were reinstated as teachers emeritus,” Gary said.

Throughout their lives, the Moores also spoke out against racial injustices, like lynchings and police brutality. Harry Moore helped form the Brevard County chapter of the NAACP in 1934 and also became the first statewide executive secretary for the NAACP.

The pair also were staunch advocates for equality at the ballot box, and for equal pay.

Earlier this year, the city of Cocoa received a $30,000 grant from the National Park Service African-American Civil Rights office to study a legal case surround equal pay that John Gilbert, the former principal of Cocoa Junior High, brought against the school board with the help of Harry T. Moore. 

Five investigations, zero arrests

Following the bombing in 1951, the FBI opened an investigation that lasted five years and involved about 80 FBI agents conducting more than a thousand interviews. 

The following four investigations were opened in the 50 years following the murders:

• 1978 – Brevard County Sheriff’s Office, Brevard County State Attorney’s Office
• 1991 – Florida Department of Law Enforcement
• 2004 – Florida Attorney General’s Office of Civil Rights
• 2008 – FBI

The first FBI investigation led to two main suspects: klansmen Earl J. Brooklyn and Tillman H. Belvin. However, as a DOJ report noted, both men died of natural causes; Belvin in August 1952 and Brooklyn on December 25, 1952.

The 1978 Brevard County investigation developed Edward L. Spivey as a suspect after he repeatedly called the sheriff’s office “to complain about the renewed interest in a closed case.” He turned out to also be a high-ranking member of the klan in Central Florida. 

During that investigation, Spivey pointed to his friend, Joseph Cox, as the one who “was responsible for detonating the dynamite under the Moore’s home” and that “Cox’s actions were not sanctioned by the klan.”

Because investigators said Spivey told them during an interview that the was dying of cancer, “the BCSO detective considered his conversations with Spivey to be deathbed confessions.”

The DOJ said in its report that Cox wasn’t able to be interview by Brevard authorities because he committed suicide on March 30, 1952, after being interviewed for a second time as a part of the first FBI investigation. 

Before the State Attorney’s Office could take his case to a grand jury, he lost his reelection bid — Spivey was never prosecuted and the case against him was closed. Spivey died of cancer in August 1980. 

No other credible suspects were developed in the following three investigations. The case was formally closed in 2011.

Enduring legacy

During its actions in February, the Brevard County School Board moved forward with developing a Moore Legacy Curriculum, which will begin to be taught starting in January 2022.

The education will include field trips to the Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Cultural Complex.