Major Works
- The Archie Moore Story 1960
- Any Boy Can: the Archie Moore Story 1971 (with Leonard B. Pearl)
Biography of Archie Moore
Archie Moore was born Archibald Lee Wright in 1916 in Benoit, Mississippi, the son of Thomas and Lorena Wright. He grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and took the surname of his aunt and uncle, Cleveland and Willie Pearl Moore, who took him in when his parents separated. For a time he was addicted to drugs and served some time in a reform school called the Missouri Training School, but he had a religious conversion which changed his life. He was a professional boxer, fighting his first bout in 1936. He became the light-heavyweight champion of the world in 1952. He retired from boxing in 1962.
Moore played Jim in the 1959 film Huckleberry Finn with Eddie Hodges as Huck. He also appeared in a few other films and on TV, but he did not choose to pursue acting.
In 1967 Moore founded the Any Boy Can (ABC) program in San Diego to give underprivileged boys a chance to play sports. When the program was opened to girls, it became Any Body Can. Moore wrote his autobiography with Leonard B. Pearl, published in 1971, called Any Boy Can: The Archie Moore Story. The book tells about Moore’s long career and his interests in civil rights and underprivileged youth.
After four divorces, Moore had married Joan Hardy in 1955, and they remained married the rest of his life. In his post-professional career, he did what he could as a trainer and philanthropist to fight juvenile delinquency and to make America a better place. In 1990 he was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. He lived in San Diego, California, when he died in 1998 at the age of 81.
Related Websites
A complete biography of Archie Moore on encyclopedia.com
Wikikpedia.org has an excellent biography of Moore
Biography of Moore in Lives of Mississippi Authors, 1817-1967, p. 338
Black Americans in Autobiography, p. 38