Even fellow civil rights activists told the Baltimore postal worker it was a bad idea to walk hundreds of miles through the heart of the South. But Moore insisted on hand-delivering a letter to the governor of Mississippi, urging the staunch segregationist to change.
Moore never made it to Jackson, Miss. He was shot to death on April 23, 1963, after crossing into Alabama. Although police quickly identified a suspect, no one was ever charged. The unsolved crime left Moore’s family wondering for 50 years whether someone would come after them, too.
Now the FBI has closed the case, arriving at the same probable suspect: a local merchant who spoke with Moore twice on the day of his death. The agency’s investigative report details the last steps of Moore, who had tried to allay his family’s fears by reminding them that he had been a Marine and that Marines could handle anything.
