By Kelsey PierceIt was at Memphis State University that Carolyn Moore learned not everything is black and white and not every question has a right or wrong answer.
One event that is forever ingrained in her memory happened on April 4, 1968. She was a freshman at the time.
Freshmen were not allowed to have a car on campus, so Moore and her roommates took a bus down to Laurelwood Shopping Center. They were in Sears trying on clothes when an announcement came over the intercom that said Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot.
“We looked at each other in concern and thought about how horrible that is,” she said. “And like typical 18 year olds, we kept shopping.”
A short time after, another announcement came over the intercom and said the store would be closing. Moore and her roommates went to the bus stop on Poplar Avenue where all of the buses kept passing them by.
“Finally, a bus driver stopped and informed us that the city was under a curfew and that all transportation had been shut down in the city,” she said. “God worked compassion in the bus driver’s heart and he saw these poor girls scared and confused and so he decided to take us directly to our dorm.”
Moore was born on March 14, 1949 in Nashville, TN. From the time she was in first grade she knew she wanted to be a teacher.
“In the first grade I wanted to be a first grade teacher,” Moore said. “In the second grade I wanted to be a second grade teacher. In the third grade it got too hard, so I went back to wanting to be a first grade teacher.”
While in college at Memphis State University, she went to a camp one summer in Grenada, Mississippi and was a counselor for children with disabilities. She loved it so much she changed her major to Special Education, working with children with autism as her specialty.
Her first year of teaching after college was the year before court-ordered busing in Memphis. Moore specifically requested on her job application to teach at a school that was historically black. She was assigned to Lester Elementary School. The kids in her classroom ranged from ages 5 to 14.
“I was the world’s worst first teacher,” she said. “Their need for discipline far exceeded my ability to discipline and so it was a very frustrating year. I got to a point where I didn’t like people.”
Moore then went to work at a residential school for autistic children in Mississippi for three years. The director of the school had turned her farmhouse into a schoolhouse. It was there that Moore learned how to teach, how to have classroom control and learned how to love teaching again. She went back to Memphis after that experience and taught at an inner city school.
Moore believes that progress has been made since that tragic day in 1968, but that there is still a lot of work to be done. She tutors children at Larose Elementary School where she said many of the students who are in fourth grade have not learned how to read.
“One of the things that concerns me most is the people who belittle the Black Lives Movement,” she said. “It’s like they don’t understand most of the people in that movement agree blue lives matter and all lives matter. That’s not the issue. The issue is it’s the black lives that are being lost to police and it’s the black children who are not being exposed to reading at a young age. We are belittling black lives by saying, well all lives matter.”
Moore had always had a strong desire to have children, but had never married. She started learning about adoption and decided she wanted to adopt a child of another race where she saw there was a great need.
Moore was turned away from an adoption agency that told her she couldn’t adopt a black child because they believed children should be raised in homes of the same race.
In 1987, Moore was finally able to adopt a son from Porter-Leath, a non-profit organization in Memphis. In 1990, she adopted her second son.
As a white woman raising two biracial children, Moore sometimes worried about what people were thinking about her.
“I thought people would think I wanted to be admired for taking these children into my home,” she said. “I didn’t feel that way at all. I just wanted kids. I’m not a saint for taking these children into my home, I’m just like anyone else.”
Moore said her life philosophy is based on a Christian perspective.
“I believe in God the creator and that he truly did send a son who was both God and man, and that his overall desire is for people to believe in his son and respond to him in a loving way. That guides everything I do, whether that’s teaching, or parenting or being a friend. Whatever it is I do, that guides it.”