Crime Alert, I'm John Lemley.

We begin this hour with a civil rights-era murder that has been never fully solved,

the killing of William Lewis Moore.

Moore was a 35-year-old postal worker and civil rights activists who set out on a solitary protest march in April of 1963.

His plan was to walk from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, to deliver a letter urging the governor to support racial integration.

Moore, a member of the Congress of Racial Equality, carried signs reading, Equal Rights for All, and Mississippi or bust as he walked south along

highways through Alabama.

But on April 23, 1963, his march ended in violence.

Moore was found shot to death along U.S. Highway 11 near Attala, Alabama.

Investigators determined he had been killed by gunfire from a 22-calibur

rifle. Authorities quickly identified a suspect, a local man named Floyd Simpson. The rifle

believed to have been used in the shooting was traced back to Simpson, who reportedly had ties to

the Ku Klux Klan.

But despite those findings, a grand jury in Etowah County declined to indict Simpson later that year, citing insufficient evidence.

Moore's murder became one of many unsolved crimes of the civil rights era.

In the days following the killing, activists from the student nonviolent

coordinating committee attempted to finish Moore's March, but they were beaten and arrested

by Alabama State Troopers. More than 60 years later, historians and researchers continue to

revisit the case, examining records and eyewitness accounts in hopes of shedding new light on the

circumstances surrounding Moore's death. For many civil rights historians, Moore's story

represents both the courage of individual activism and the violence that confronted those

pushing for equality in the early 1960s.

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