The Richard B. Moore Papers document Moore's activities as a communist organizer in the 1930s, his publishing efforts and advocacy for Caribbean independence and federation in the 1940s and 1950s, and his activities as a Pan-Africanist...
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The Richard B. Moore Papers document Moore's activities as a communist organizer in the 1930s, his publishing efforts and advocacy for Caribbean independence and federation in the 1940s and 1950s, and his activities as a Pan-Africanist intellectual, lecturer and book distributor in the 1960s and 1970s. Pathway Press, the International Labor Defense (ILD), Frederick Douglass Book Centre and the Afroamerican Institute are well represented in the collection. The ILD files document Moore's public speaking and organizing efforts during the Scottsboro trial, and include a handwritten letter from Daisy Bates, one of the two women allegedly raped who later joined in the legal defense of the accused. The files for Pathway Press and the Frederick Douglass Book Centre relate mainly to Moore's financial difficulties as an independent publisher and book distributor. Correspondents in the Barbados series include his long time friend Reginald Pierrepointe, Bishop Reginald Barrow of the African Orthodox Church in New York, and Barbados Prime-Minister Errol Barrow. Moore's campaigns for Caribbean federation and independence, his support work during the 1937 sit-down strike in Trinidad, and his participation in Barbados politics before and after independence, are sketchily documented throughout the collection. Writings, both published and unpublished, date from the last twenty years of his life and consist of speeches, articles and essays, and some handwritten notes.
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