Despite his meteoric rise through the ranks of academia, Dr. James L. Moore III, isn’t shy about reminding anyone who he comes into contact with, that he’s a product of South Carolina.
“All that I am and that I hope to be is shaped by my experience growing up in South Carolina,” Moore told the audience of several hundred at the American Educational Research Association’s 2017 luncheon, where he was presented with the mid-career Scholar of Color award. “And I want to recognize the village that nurtured me, loved me and cared for me so that I am at this point in my career.”
It must have been humbling then, when Moore was included along with 11 other influential African-American figures in the South Carolina African-American Heritage Calendar last year.
The calendar, which Moore read as a child, is distributed each year to about 100,000 children across the Palmetto State and has included iconic African-Americans who hail from the state, such as the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Marian Wright Edelman and the late Dr. Benjamin E. Mays.
“My mother, many years ago when I was in undergrad, used to send care packages and write notes and she said, ‘Son, look at this calendar … look at all these wonderful African-Americans from my beloved South Carolina. Someday son, I can see you being in that calendar,’” Moore recalled in an interview with Diverse last year. “And that’s what made that calendar so significant. She’s not here in the flesh, but it was a testimonial to what my mom saw in me.”
Born and raised in Lyman, South Carolina, a small blue-collar mill town, Moore left the state to head to Delaware State University, where he had plans to someday play football professionally. But after he suffered an injury, he turned his full attention to his studies, becoming an English education major. He became inspired when he learned that Dr. John McFadden had been named the Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professor at the University of South Carolina — the first African-American scholar in the history of the school to be endowed with a professorship.
“That was striking to me,” says Moore. “It was a paradigm shift for me. I said, ‘Wow, I want to carve out a scholarly career in which I am able to make a difference in my community and beyond.”
