Wes Moore, Black Democrats aiming to make Maryland history as first African-American mayor of a major American city, announces his bid for mayor of Baltimore.
The story of Wes Moore from Baltimore, Maryland, is one of an African-American man of his generation breaking barriers to become the first African-American mayor of a major US city.
Wes Moore grew up in Baltimore. He graduated from the high school his father started in a predominantly African-American neighborhood. With no college degree, Moore used his skillset as a civil engineer to work for a small electric utility company as a maintenance worker.
However, his education didn’t stop there. He took courses in business administration and public relations in college.
Then, he used that newly acquired knowledge to build an advertising agency in Baltimore, the East Coast capital of black America, where he was one of the first African-American advertising executives of his time.
Wes Moore was born on October 20, 1940, in Baltimore, Maryland. His father was a civil engineer employed by Baltimore Gas and Electric Company that took over the power monopoly of the company upon the death of his father.
Moore’s mother had two additional children with a man who was her legal husband at the time.
After his father died, Wes Moore’s mother began an affair with the man who was her husband, which was illegal at the time and led to her being charged and sentenced to a prison term. This led to a separation from the man she ended up marrying in prison who she lived with.
Moore’s mother left him with his twin sisters.
Wes Moore was placed in foster care after he was taken to foster home in order to give his mother more time with her children.
When it was his turn to be moved out, Wes Moore was sent to live with a paternal aunt.
The foster home that Wes Moore lived in was called the “Little Nubian Home”, which he described as a typical two-room apartment with a “white tile floor”.
It was an apartment where many of Moore’s female relatives lived, such as the girl who was raised by his aunt