A Postman's 1963 Walk For Justice, Cut Short On An Alabama Road : NPR: In April of 1963, a Baltimore mailman set off to deliver the most important letter in his life — one he wrote himself. William Lewis Moore decided to walk along Highway 11 from Chattanooga, Tenn., to Jackson, Miss., hoping to hand-deliver his letter to Gov. Ross Barnett. Moore wanted Barnett to fundamentally change Mississippi's racial hierarchy — something unthinkable for a Southern politician at the time.
In his letter, Moore warned the governor, "Do not go down in infamy as one who fought the democracy for all which you have not the power to prevent." It never reached its destination. Moore was shot on the roadside, a killer never charged.
Through time, Moore's story has been overshadowed by more emblematic moments that gripped the nation that year, like the assassination of civil rights leader Medgar Evers in Jackson, Miss., in May and the deaths of four black girls in the September bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. But while Moore's walk for equality is less well-known, it's an important chapter in the civil rights movement for many.
