Moore, Queen Mother

MOORE, QUEEN MOTHER (1898–1997). Born on 27 July 1898 in New Iberia, Louisiana, Audley “Queen Mother” Moore was a life-long radical Black political activist best known for her organizing within Communist and Black Nationalist movements. The eldest daughter of St. Cyr and Ella (Johnson) Moore, Audley’s family migrated to New Orleans at the turn of the century. She and her sisters—Eloise and Loretta—spent their girlhoods among the middle-class Black community in the Crescent City. During this time, Moore received some formal schooling at St. Katherine’s, a Catholic girls school, and musical training. She socialized among the city’s Black elite. However, the death of her mother in 1904 and her father in 1917 orphaned the Moore girls and forced Audley to end her schooling in order to care for her younger sisters.

While working as a domestic servant and hair dresser, Moore met her first husband, Josiah Spraggs, whom she married in July 1920. Spraggs introduced Moore to Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Moore was caught up in Garvey’s whirlwind after she witnessed him speak at the New Orleans Longshoreman’s Hall in in 1922. She became a Garveyite, joining one of the largest chapters of the UNIA, the New Orleans Division. Invested in Garvey’s “Back to Africa” movement, Moore and Spraggs made plans to re-locate to Liberia under the auspices of the UNIA’s emigration program. When this fell through, the pair migrated to New York City, the site of UNIA headquarters. By the time Moore arrived in New York, Garvey was imprisoned and soon to be deported for mail fraud and the UNIA had diminished. Moore searched for other avenues to express her Black Nationalist politics. She found an organizational and political home in the Communist Party, which initially supported Black nationhood and Self-determination.

Audley Moore first encountered the Communist Party in the early 1930s through their satellite organization, the International Labor Defense, and their protests on behalf of the Scottsboro Boys. She formally joined the Party in 1936. Moore was an active street agitator and orator who quickly rose in the ranks of the Harlem Branch and New York State Party leadership. She made a name for herself as a grassroots street organizer who formed coalitions with a cross-section of Black progressive organizations including the National Association of Colored Women and the National Council of Negro Women. She ran on the Communist Party ticket for Assembly in Harlem’s 19th District in 1940, and by 1942 she became secretary of the New York State branch of the Party. Moore was also the leader of the Harlem Branch’s Women Commission, mobilizing on behalf of women in Harlem for access to welfare, food, housing, and jobs. However, her most visible Party role was as Communist leader Ben Davis’s campaign manager in his successful bids for New York City Council in 1943 and 1945.

Although Moore worked with the Party and progressive organizations throughout the 1930s and 1940s, she adamantly maintained that she “never lost her nationalism.” In the mid-1940s, as the Party backed away from its support of central Black nationalist principles, Moore, along with others, began to question the organization’s motives. By 1950, she found that her personal beliefs and Party principles were incompatible. She formally resigned from the Party and returned to New Orleans.

When Audley Moore relocated Louisiana she also returned to organizing within Black Nationalist communities. She joined forces with her sisters and former Garveyites to create the Universal Association of Ethiopian Women (UAEW). The small but impactful group fought for Black men falsely accused of rape on Death Row and for Black women who lost their welfare benefits due to racist laws. It was also among the UAEW women that Moore first began to take up the question of reparations for Black Americans. In the early 1960s, Moore moved to Philadelphia where she joined the National Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Observance Committee (NEPCOC) and began her reparations organizing in earnest. Through this and other organizations, such as the Reparations Committee in Los Angeles, Moore authored texts such as Why Reparations? Reparations is the Battle Cry for the Economic and Social Freedom of More than 25 Million Descendants of American Slaves, and jump started grassroots reparations activism. Due to these efforts, many now know her as the mother of the modern reparations movement.

By 1965, Audley Moore had returned to Harlem where she organized for the twin causes of Black nationhood and reparations. Now in her sixties, Moore began to function as a mentor for the next generation of Black radicals by mentoring activists such as Muhammad Ahmad (Max Stanford), founder of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), and influencing key theorists and activists such as Malcolm X. In 1968 she was one of the critical forces involved in the declaration of the Republic of New Africa (RNA) and initiated its statement of independence. For her tireless efforts she earned the title of “Queen Mother” of the Black Liberation Movement. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Moore expanded the scope and reach of her activism. She travelled globally, speaking at the All-African Women’s Conference and the Sixth Pan-African Congress in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania in 1972 and 1974 respectively. Moore was also the special guest of African heads of state such as Tanzanian president, Julius Nyerere, and travelled across the African continent and Europe speaking about Black Liberation. Stateside, Queen Mother Moore worked tirelessly for the last two decades of her life, lecturing widely on Black organizing and supporting a new generation of scholars and activists. She was also active with reparations groups such as National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA). One of Moore’s last public appearances was and the Million Man March in 1995. Audley Moore passed away on May 2, 1997 in New York at the age of 98.

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McDuffie Erik S. “‘I wanted a Communist Philosophy, but I wanted us to have a chance to organize our people:’ the Diasporic Radicalism of Queen Mother Audley Moore and the Origins of Black Power,” African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 3:2 (2011): 181-185.

Moore, Queen Mother. “The Black Scholar Interviews Queen Mother Moore.” The Black Scholar, 4: 6/7 (1973): 47-55.