Nonprofit continues decades of work
Stevie Moore hoisted a poster board bearing his deceased son’s image above his head. He was standing next to a group of public officials gathered to speak about the record level of violence occurring in Memphis in 2020.
Addressing those gathered Nov. 9 at the Shelby County Crime Victims & Rape Crisis Center, Moore, 70, spoke of the night his son, Prentice Moore, was shot and killed with an AK-47 assault rifle following an argument. It wasn’t his first time speaking about his son publicly. But, as Moore later remarked, it might as well have been. His comments about that night are as impassioned as ever.
“I know I get carried away sometimes,” Moore said, “But there’s no worse feeling in the world. And when we talk about this year...that’s a lot of parents who are burying their kids.”
Moore, the founder and president of Freedom From Unnecessary Negatives, has appeared alongside public officials and often, at crime scenes, since 1987. The anti-violence component of the nonprofit, Stop the Killing, came along after Prentice Moore’s killing in 2003.
A former felon with multiple drug convictions to his name, Moore believes his first-hand experience makes him uniquely poised to advocate for alternatives to violence. Burying his son means he has first-hand knowledge of the unique, agonizing loss felt by many Memphis parents this year.
Decades spent as an anti-violence activist, are evidenced by the dozens of plaques and photos jammed into multiple display cases inside of the nonprofit’s headquarters on South Third Street.
Under that roof, everything from a Crimestoppers-like tip line to an event space, available for rent for “everything positive” is managed by Moore and a small staff.
The successes of the nonprofit are not easily quantifiable. But Moore is persistent, trusting that every community cook-out, every State of Emergency ride, hammers home, to at least one person, the belief that there’s always an alternative to violence.
The other focus of the nonprofit, post-incarceration reentry, materializes in employment initiatives for ex-offenders, coupled with an emphasis on financial literacy.
In all of his work, Moore emphasizes self-agency. He believes it’s up to men like himself to influence others with similar pasts.
“I put it on men like me. We haven’t been, in the past, going out there ourselves and trying to turn some of these men around. We’re too busy playing the ‘blame game,’ blaming everyone else but ourselves for our problems,” Moore said.
Combating the “blame game” for Moore means being candid about his own past dealing drugs and facilitating sex work from female prostitutes. It also means rejecting certain labels.
“We’ve been branding our young, Black men, as ‘gangbangers.’ There’s no such thing as a ‘gangbanger.’ These are lost men, and many of them didn’t get disciplined when they grew up. But they can turn it around, there’s a way to turn it all around,” Moore said.
Usually, Moore’s nonprofit throws holiday feasts for the community. It’s a chance to feed neighborhood kids and stock them up with school supplies. The effort is powered by community donations.
COVID-19 complicates things this year, but Moore and staff will still find a way to distribute some measures of joy to the community. They’ll still work with bereaved families, hoping that any number of efforts will bring comfort.
“Because that’s the other part of it too,” Moore said. “We can’t just focus on death. You have to live too. You have to remember that they lived. I remember that my son lived. And when you remember that they lived, part of you wants to live on, too.”