Dr. William Moore, R.I.P.

I just learned tonight that one of my former professors at CofC passed away today. No details were released in the newscast as to the nature of his passing, except that he was surrounded by family at the end.

Dr. Moore was one of the best professors I had during my undergraduate career – if not the best. A testament to this is the fact that he was one of only three professors whom I took classes with more than one time. The two classes I had with Dr. Moore were Extremist Politics and the History of the Civil Rights Movement. Both classes met in the evening, and both classes were scheduled for 3 hours. Now, just because a class is scheduled for three hours (and in the case of Extremist politics, that was two times a week because it was an express course), does not mean that it automatically lasts for three hours, at least for most professors. In both of these classes, however, we were in our seats right until the last minute, due in large part to Dr. Moore’s ability to plan his lectures so perfectly, and in larger part to the fact that you wanted to be there for that time.

Before those classes, I had never learned so much in a class. Every class had me riveted, and my only regret is that I was unable, due to scheduling conflicts, to take Southern Politics with Dr. Moore. I was challenged more in those classes, than in any other class in my life. Our term papers for each class were not meant to be regurgitated information on a topic that has been bled dry (you can only write so much original stuff on Plato and Hume) by many other classes before hand. Instead, they were meant to inspire us to actually do real research, learn about these topics, and formulate ideas that had the opportunity to be novel.

Not many classes give you that kind of experience.

Dr. Moore had a huge impact on me as a student, and more importantly, he had a huge impact on how I view the world as a whole. Being able to research something like the Orangeburg Massacre, to sit down one on one with Dr. Cleveland Sellers who was charged with inciting said massacre, and get that kind of first hand information; that is something I would never had had the chance to do, and it was Dr. Moore who opened the door for me to immerse myself in that kind of history.

But he was also one of the funniest professors I ever had. I spent just as much time in class learning more that I ever had, as I did laughing harder than I ever hope to again. One of the stories that I remember most was him telling us how he grew up poor in the country and as he left the country and went on to college he came to hate the three things that epitomized poverty: corn bread, country music and overalls. He said that he did come back around to loving some good corn bread, and that country music – true country music – is one of the best genres out there. But he still couldn’t stand overalls.

The man was also a fantastic storyteller and this is due in large part to the fact that he was a primary source of information on the stuff were were studying. He infiltrated the KKK, was an “official” member of countless other extremist organization (through the mail), and had an FBI file on him due to COINTELPRO – the FBI’s counterintelligence program. He showed us how thick his file was, which he was able to request due to the Freedom of Information Act, and how almost all of it was blacked out due to “national security.”

Even though I haven’t contacted him since my graduation, my heart actually feels heavy, both from a sense of personal loss of a teacher who shaped who I am, but also a sense of the loss of future College of Charleston students who won’t have the pleasure of learning about all the various historical stages of the KKK, the John Birch Society, and the Communist Party. I’ve never had the privilege of meeting a more brilliant, more engaging, and more enduring a spirit as Dr. William Moore, and the world is definitely a darker place for its loss today.

~ by aeqvitas on March 26, 2009.