Bertha V. Moore, 1896-1980

Bertha V. Moore started the Tea Time Study Club to increase the political leverage of African Americans in the city. She named the club after the Boston Tea Party because, she emphasized, “we were revolutionaries” – revolutionaries who knew how to work the system.

Tea Time members were busiest during the political campaigns. They tried to get local candidates to support the group’s aims – improved accommodations and job opportunities for African Americans. The club sponsored forums, inviting candidates to appear and learn about the community’s concerns. It also supervised the city’s Emancipation Day Program, which celebrated President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves.

Moore came up from the South in 1922. She went to school in segregated Alabama and received her teaching degree from the historically Black Selma University, Selma, Ala. Prior to moving to Akron, Moore taught in the segregated schools of the Alabama.

In 1922, the Akron Public Schools had no African-American teachers. Years would pass before any were hired. Moore began teaching adults how to read and write through the adult literacy program of the Works Projects Administration in the early 1930s.

Photo courtesy of the Women’s History Project of the Akron Area.

–Kathleen L. Endres