Frank Moore

Frank Moore, a World War I veteran buried at Little Rock National Cemetery in 1932, moved to Phillips County, Arkansas, after being honorably discharged in December of 1918 from service as a private in the 162nd Depot Brigade. There he worked on a farm and was a member of the progressive Farmers and Household Union of America, a coalition of sharecroppers who sought to sue their plantation owners in hopes of obtaining fair wages and an accounting of their accrued debts. On the evening of September 30, 1919, local police officers and railroad agents interrupted a union meeting at the Hope Spur Church, and a shootout occurred, sparking the Elaine Race Massacre, one of the bloodiest in the nation's history. In the aftermath of the massacre, a Phillips County grand jury indicted 122 Black men for various crimes ranging from murder to night-riding. Moore and eleven other union members, known as the Elaine Twelve, were charged with first-degree murder for their alleged role in the deaths of white men involved in the killings. Six of the accused, including Moore, had their cases taken before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1923 with the help of the N.A.A.C.P. The Court overturned the death sentences in Moore v. Dempsey, one of the most important cases in civil rights history. With the help of the Twelve's defense lawyer, Arkansas native Scipio Africanus Jones, all of the men were released from prison by 1925.

Little Rock, Arkansas · United States