their support for the branch under his leadership. The rifts brought friction with the national NAACP which undercut Moore's power by splitting the Philadelphia chapter into three sub-branches. Moore also gravitated toward black power in the mid-1960s. He acknowledged how his military service shaped his grassroots activism: "I was determined when I got back [from World War II combat] that what rights I didn't have I was going to take, using every weapon in the arsenal of democracy. After nine years in the Marine Corps, I don't intend to take another order from any son of a bitch that walks." Moore actively discouraged Martin Luther King Jr. from visiting Philadelphia and he was one of the first civil rights leaders to have welcomed Malcolm X's growing role in the national movement. Moore's fiery rhetoric and confrontational style helped him cultivate a working-class constituency which enabled him to run independent black political campaigns outside the white establishment and traditional middle-class black networks. In 1967, he ran an unsuccessful campaign for mayor and in 1975, Moore sought the Fifth District seat on the Philadelphia City Council, after incumbent Councilwoman Ethel D. Allen announced she would vacate the seat, and seek re-election to an at-large seat. Moore would go on to win the election. As Moore was nearing the end of his first term, attorney John Street announced his intention to challenge Moore for his seat in the 1979 election. While Moore was, by that time, in failing health, he initially vowed to see-off the challenge from Street. However, he died of a heart attack in 1979 before the May primary. Street went on to win the election, and quelled some of the tensions over his original challenge to Moore by sponsoring a bill to rename the former Columbia Avenue in Moore's honor. Over time, appreciation for Moore has grown beyond the working poor with whom he long enjoyed popularity, and he is cited as a pivotal figure in the fields of social justice and race relations. See also Cecil B. Moore (SEPTA station) Cecil B. Moore Avenue 1967 Philadelphia mayoral election References External links Disc Jockey Georgie Woods, Rev. Ralph Abernathy-SCLC, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Bob Klein-WDAS General Manager, Cecil Moore, Esq. Philadelphia NAACP [WDASHistory.org] Cecil B. Moore branch - The Free Library of Philadelphia 1915 births 1979 deaths 20th-century African-American politicians 20th-century American lawyers 20th-century American politicians Activists for African-American