Pennsylvania: The Goddam Boss

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The N.A.A.C.P. consumes most of Moore's out-of-court time. Twenty months ago, his chapter had a membership of 7,000. Today it is close to 30,000. Ten thousand new members have signed up in 1964 alone. But Moore cares not about mere numbers, and he is contemptuous of all Negroes who do not join him in his own combative spirit.

"I run a grass-roots group," he says, "not a cocktail-party, tea-sipping, fashion-show-attending group of exhibitionists. That's the difference. Those things divide the Negro, separate him into classes. I want nothing to divide the Negro; I want a one-class Negro community. Your so-called middle-class Negro is a 'professional Negro' who doesn't come into contact with the masses. I'd be lost if I had to move up to Mount Airy or one of those places where I'd have to be so damned respectable that I couldn't go out and stand on a street corner on Saturday night. The Negro is always on the corner on Friday or Saturday night. That's where you go to talk."

Moore's chief enemy is "thieving merchants." "Don't mention exploitation to me, I've seen the worst of it. I mean when a man buys a pair of $5 shoes for a dollar a week, he winds up paying $12 for the shoes. And the rotten meat, the packages of chicken that say 5 Ib. and weigh 4½ lb., the stale bread and the high rents. I warned them in 1959 that the exploitation was going to blow the top off. I told them again in 1963, but the merchants did nothing to stop it. Well, the people up there won't wreck those stores again. We'll just boycott them. The only Negro store that got wrecked was owned by a man named Richberg. They thought he was a Jew. A Chinaman up there put a sign on his store saying, "I'm colored too!' ''

"I Do." Last week 90 white and Negro leaders met to form an emergency committee to prevent future riots. "So," sneered Moore, "now the ministers and the liberals and the professional part-time Negroes want to form an emergency committee to stop riots. What the hell do they know about it? Do you know that not one of those bastards even asked me to attend that meeting? I invited myself, so's I could walk out if it didn't go my way."

As it happened, the meeting did not go Moore's way, and Moore walked out. "They don't speak for the Negro," he insisted. "I do. The riots proved that. But not a living soul from my group was there. Those bastards don't want to help the Negro. They just want to perform."

Moore scarcely cares that the national leaders of the N.A.A.C.P. blanch with dismay whenever he moves into action. He just wants equal rights—or maybe a little bit better than equal rights—for Negroes. Gazing around his shabby office near the city courthouse one day last week, Cecil Moore sighed: "I'm sick, I'm tired, I'm bankrupt, and I'm weary of the venality I see on all sides of me." But he is not about to give up. For better or for worse, his cause is his life. And as far as Philadelphia Negroes are concerned, again for better or worse, he assesses his position accurately. "I," he says, "am the goddam boss."

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