The Metro: A lifetime of fighting for Detroit’s children, now carved in brick and stone

For more than half a century, Helen “Mother” Moore has been a familiar sight at Detroit school board meetings, whether she is at the microphone, in the hallway rallying parents, or being removed by security after a showdown with the board.

Today, at 89, Mother Moore is still at it. She has helped lead court fights over the state’s management of Detroit’s schools, challenged emergency managers and charter expansion, and pushed for literacy to be recognized as a civil right. 

She also helped launch Let’s Read, a volunteer-driven literacy program created with the Detroit school district. Along the way, Moore has mentored generations of parents to also fight against classrooms with broken heat, missing textbooks, and teacher shortages.

Because, as Mother Moore once put it at a school board meeting: “Education is how we get free.”

This weekend, the Dexter-Elmhurst Recreation Center reopens in her honor. The newly renovated Helen Moore Community Center sits in the west side neighborhood where she nurtured her organizing. It is a brick-and-mortar monument to a woman who has spent decades insisting that Black children should not have to leave their communities to find opportunity.

Moore joined Robyn Vincent to discuss the moments that shaped her and why she keeps fighting.