Moore, Audley "Queen Mother"

July 27, 1898
May 7, 1997

Queen Mother Moore's long career in service to African Americans provides an example of a consummate community organizer and activist. Born and raised in Louisiana, Moore became a member of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and a follower of Marcus Garvey in 1919. Through Garvey she was first exposed to African history. Moore and her family moved to Harlem along with the flood of southern migrants during the 1920s. Here she founded the Harriet Tubman Association to assist black women workers. Moore also used the Communist Party as a vehicle for achieving her aims. Impressed with its work on the Scottsboro case, she used the information and skills she acquired through the party to address the needs of the Harlem community by organizing rent strikes, fighting evictions, and taking other actions. Eventually, the racism she encountered in the party moved Moore to resign.

The major theme of Moore's career was developing a Pan-African consciousness. From Garvey through involvement with the National Council of Negro Women to Malcolm X's Organization of Afro-American Unity, Moore emphasized a knowledge of and pride in African history and its African-American connections. She brought this to the fore in her campaign for reparations, begun in 1955, as she did in founding other institutions in the black community. Among these were the World Federation of African People and a tribute to her sister in the Eloise Moore College of African Studies in Mount Addis Ababa, New York. She was also one of the founders of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church of North and South America, of which she was an archabbess. Moore received the title Queen Mother of the Ashanti people when in Ghana on one of her many trips to Africa.

See also Garvey, Marcus; Malcolm X; National Council of Negro Women; Reparations; Universal Negro Improvement Association

Bibliography

Hill, Ruth Edmonds, ed. The Black Women Oral History Project. 10 vols. Westport, Conn.: Meckler, 1991.

"Interview: Queen Mother Moore." Black Scholar 4 (March–April 1973): 47–55.

Lanker, Brian. I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed the World. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1989.

judith weisenfeld (1996)

Queen Mother See Elizabeth