Oral history with Mr. Earl Napoleon Moore

              Oral history with Mr. Earl Napolean Moore
F341.5 . M57 vol. 747, pt. 2
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Biography
Born in Biloxi, Mississippi, on December 19, 1914, Mr. Earl Napolean Moore was the youngest of sixteen children born to William and Maggie Moore. His father was a ship and bridge carpenter, and his mother was a homemaker. Mr. Moore's father also grew a garden annually to help feed his family, including potatoes, turnip greens, and beans as well as raising hogs and cattle.
Growing up in Biloxi was a time of fishing, baseball, and roaming the large tracts of woods that made up Biloxi in the early 1900s with very few cars privately owned and streetcars for public transportation. Segregation and Jim Crowism were entrenched ways of life during Mr. Moore's childhood. As a child, Mr. Moore belonged to the Junior Odd Fellows, a charitable organization.
Mr. Moore was graduated from Biloxi Colored High School. For a short period of time, he was a boxer and a spar mate, traveling the boxing circuits through New Orleans and Mobile. He boxed in Texas during a time when it was prohibited, and the boxers had to dodge the Texas Rangers. Mr. Moore attended college to learn masonry and wood crafting. In 1942, Mr. Moore was drafted into the United States Army; he became an Army Police corporal in the first African- American police force of the United States Army, created by an act of Congress. He served for four years, during World War II, in North Africa and Southeast Asia.
Mr. Moore's career in the civil service from 1965 through 1978 was to manage the V. A. building in Biloxi, Mississippi.
Mr. Moore is a Mason, Henry Beck Lodge, and a member of the NAACP; he was awarded the First Missionary Baptist Golden Years of Service honor, 1946 through 1995.
On December 31, 1956, Mr. Moore married Victoria Pogue.
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