Queen Mother Moore
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Queen Mother Moore, an outspoken civil rights leader and black nationalist who befriended leaders from Marcus Garvey to Nelson Mandela to Jesse Jackson was a towering figure in the African-American fight for civil liberties and equality.
Audley Moore was born in New Iberia, Louisiana on July 27 1898. Both of her parents died by the time she was in fourth grade, so she dropped out of school and by age 15 became a hairdresser.
A few years later, her life changed forever when she heard a speech in New Orleans by Marcus Garvey, a native of Jamaica known as the "Black Moses" who founded a back-to-Africa movement. Inspired by Garvey's talk of African culture and pride, she moved to Harlem and became a leader of his Universal Negro Improvement Association. Garvey's movement collapsed when he was deported in 1927 after serving two years in prison for mail fraud.
A powerful speaker and organizer, Moore spent the next 60 years fighting for causes that ranged the political spectrum - always working outside the civil rights mainstream. She was a hero in Harlem and a familiar figure to historians. She had become the elder stateswoman of black nationalism.
One of her last public appearances was at the Million Man March in October 1995, where she appeared on stage with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and others.
Taking the first of many trips to Africa in 1972, she was given the honorary title "Queen Mother" of an Ashanti tribe in Ghana, which became her informal name in the United States. She attended the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in South Africa, according to her family.
Queen Mother Moore died in a Brooklyn nursing home from natural causes, aged 97 in May of 1996.