Location: Roanoke Avenue at P.W. Moore Elementary School in Elizabeth City
County: Pasquotank
Original Date Cast: 2017
Peter Weddick Moore was born into slavery in Duplin County in 1859. He was the son of Weddick and Alecy Thompson Moore, both slaves. While little is known of Moore’s early life, he was raised in a family that valued education and religion. He studied at the Philosophian Academy in Sampson County and became a teacher in Clinton. Shortly thereafter he went on to pursue a college degree at Shaw University. Working at Shaw and in a local foundry during the school terms and teaching and holding teachers’ institutes during breaks, Moore supported himself and graduated in 1887. He taught for a year before being named assistant principal of the State Normal School in Plymouth.
In 1891 the new State Normal School for the Colored Race (now Elizabeth City State University) was established, and Moore was appointed principal. The school opened the following year and increased enrollment regularly, requiring a larger facility in 1894 and again, at its present location, in 1912. The early growth and development of the school is universally attributed to Moore’s leadership and his skills as an educator and administrator. Aside from serving as superintendent, he also taught many classes and served as the school’s fundraiser. Soliciting money was of primary concern to a school that was particularly underfunded.
Always interested in advancing the level of education available to African Americans, Moore was a founding member and president of the North Carolina Teachers Association. Moore was also responsible for bringing industrial education to the State Normal School. He lobbied the state and donors for money to fund the program and visited Tuskegee Institute for ideas as to how to launch it. Once enrolled, each student was required to perform some sort of industrial work as part of his education at the State Normal School. Moore wrote that, “industrial education not only increases learning capacity, but promotes fidelity, accuracy, honesty, persistency and intelligence. The capacity to make a living becomes enlarged into the capacity to make a life.”
In failing health, Moore retired from the State Normal School in 1928, having made dramatic contributions to the education and livelihoods of countless African Americans in a career that spanned his lifetime. Moore died in 1934 and is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Elizabeth City.
References:
Elizabeth City Daily Advance, April 16, 1934
Evelyn A. Johnson, History of Elizabeth City State University: A Story of Survival (1978)
N. C. Newbold, Five North Carolina Negro Educators (1939)
Leonard Ballou, “Pasquotank Pedagogues” (1966)
Glen Bowman, Elizabeth City State University 1891-2016 (2015)
"Historical Timeline," Elizabeth City State University https://www.ecsu.edu/about/history.php
Peter Weddick Moore (1859-1934) Papers, 1905-1934, University Archives, G. R. Little Library, Elizabeth City State University