[Percy Moore]

One year before Terry Francois became the first African American to serve on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Percy Moore made an attempt at one of the open seats. A navy veteran and Berkeley graduate, Moore was administrator for the ILWU Warehouseman’s Welfare Fund when he announced his candidacy. In a profile of the candidates published by the San Francisco Examiner, Moore stated that his aim was to represent a certain group of interests not being adequately represented, and that his basic theory of his campaign was that “non-whites need to educate the white community that it is in their advantage to vote for non-white qualified candidates on a common interest, rathern an a racial bias.” While he came up short of victory, he had a long career in public service, becoming staff assistant to the Director of the State Department of Social Welfare in 1964 and later executive director of the Oakland Economic Development Council.