Roy K. Moore leaves behind a legacy, working for justice during an ugly era in the civil rights move
ment.
By Holbrook Mohr
Associated Press Writer
JACKSON, Miss. — Roy K. Moore, an FBI agent who oversaw investigations into some of the most notorious civil rights-era killings, including those depicted in the movie “Mississippi Burning,” has died. He was 94.
Moore’s daughter, Sandra Giglio, said he died Sunday in a Madison, Miss., nursing home of complications from pneumonia and other ailments.
Moore, a former Marine and native of Oregon, had established a solid reputation in the FBI when bureau director J. Edgar Hoover sent him to Mississippi in 1964 after the disappearance of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman.
Nearly two months later, their bodies were dug out of an earthen dam in Neshoba County. “Mississippi Burning,” released in 1988 and starring Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe, was based on the case.
Bill Minor, a veteran Mississippi journalist who covered the civil rights struggles, said Monday that Moore established the first “full-fledged FBI bureau” in Mississippi and set his sights on the Ku Klux Klan.
