To track Robert Moore’s life and career is to study one person’s successful journey in the Great Migration of the 20th century. To see this Springfield man’s connections to other major events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Civil Rights Movement adds a personal dimension that makes history feel more real.
Born in 1943, Moore grew up in the Jim Crow era in a Mississippi farming community. He graduated from an all-Black high school after never experiencing an integrated school. He declined a scholarship to play basketball in junior college and enlisted in the U.S. Army, setting him on a life journey that he boldly designed.
He describes all of this in his autobiography, Off My Neck, published Aug. 1. He says the title “doesn’t just reflect a moment. It reflects a lifetime. It bridges my journey as a Black man growing up in Mississippi who found his purpose in life in Illinois.”
The book is short, as autobiographies go. I read a pre-publication manuscript that was 61 typed pages – about 25,000 words – and in final editing.
The book’s best stories describe Moore’s encounters with racial strife and how he responded. While on leave from Fort Riley, Kansas, in 1962, he writes: “I quietly staged my own rebellion against segregation by removing the ‘Whites Only’ sign from a water cooler in my small town in (Algoma), Mississippi.”
Two years later, riding on a Greyhound bus that stopped at a café in Arkansas, Moore was, as a Black man, accustomed to buying his hamburger around the back of the café. “I challenged this practice by entering the (front of the) establishment and asking to be served,” he writes, adding he was wearing his Army uniform at the time. “There must have been a pause. …. Well, I was served. These experiences became part of my long career of fighting for human and civil rights across the nation.”
After three years in the Army, he moved to Rockford, Illinois, to live with his brother and eventually began a career in law enforcement. He later transferred to Springfield with the Illinois State Police to work on affirmative action; moved back South to serve with the Savannah, Georgia, police department; then relocated to Springfield and was appointed U.S. Marshal for the Central District of Illinois by President Clinton in 1994. His final job was serving as police chief in Jackson, Mississippi.
Moore initially moved to Rockford because his brother had already migrated there, and he did not want to stay in Mississippi. He became one of five to six million Blacks to relocate voluntarily from the South to the Midwest, Northeast and West between 1910 and 1970. In Rockford he briefly had three jobs – the last one at a Chrysler manufacturing plant that ended in disappointment – before applying at the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Office. He got the job and soon discovered he was the only Black deputy sheriff working on patrol.
A major catalyst occurred in Moore’s career when he and a white deputy were discussing whether the Illinois State Police had any Black representation, and his white colleague “said he knew of none because they could not pass the written test. This statement became a challenge to me,” Moore said.
Moore took the ISP test, easily passed it and became a state trooper in 1972. Three years later, he was relocated to Springfield to become ISP’s affirmative action officer, and later, its Equal Employment Opportunity director. That positioned him to develop programs and write articles for national publications about recruiting minorities to law enforcement.
In 1994, when under consideration for the U.S. marshal position with the support of U.S. Senators Carol Moseley-Braun and Paul Simon, Moore faced adversity, dealing with a clerk’s fabricated allegations of racism and sexual harassment. He survived that onslaught and became the first Black U.S. marshal in central Illinois, serving from 1994 to 2002.
Moore devotes short chapters to his various positions, along with anecdotes about his family, including his wife, Barbara, who was a teacher, and his siblings who migrated to Illinois and Pennsylvania. He sometimes leaves the reader wishing for more details, such as all he had to consider on 9/11, when he was U.S. marshal, or what he has done in the past 20 years in Springfield as a consultant on civil rights and law enforcement issues.
But I respect a writer’s prerogative about what to say and what to leave out. Moore’s new book is a worthwhile case study and shows us how one person can bend the arc of history toward justice. His entering the front of a café for whites did not gain the fame that Rosa Parks did, but as Moore writes: “Just as I lifted the weighty foot of segregation off my neck, so can young brothers and sisters.”
Author Robert Moore will be featured at a book launch event from 5 to 7 p.m. Sept. 11 in the Authors Room of the Illinois State Library, 300 S. Second St., Springfield. His book, Off My Neck, was released by Robert Moore & Associates and Black Marshal Publishing on Aug. 1. To buy the book, go to Moore’s website, www.blackmarshalpublishing.com.
“I look forward to meeting supporters, sharing stories and signing copies,” Moore said. The date of the event also happens to be his birthday.
Ed Wojcicki worked in print journalism for 26 years before serving in (and retiring from) higher education administration and association management. He directly collaborated with Robert Moore from 2017-2022 on improving race relations in law enforcement.
This article appears in Fall Guide 2025.
