Joanna Moore
*Joanna Moore was born on this date in 1832. She was a white-American Baptist missionary.
Born in Clarion County, Pennsylvania, Joanna Patterson Moore went to Island Number Ten in the Mississippi River in November 1863 to work with around 1,000 Black women and children who had gone there seeking protection from the Union Army during the American Civil War. She later ministered in Helena, Arkansas, Lauderdale, Mississippi, and New Orleans.
She was the first white woman missionary appointed by the American Baptist Home Mission Society and worked predominantly among Black communities in the American South. She founded a series of training schools and helped organize women's societies. She also founded the monthly magazine Hope, which promoted Biblical literacy.
Moore was also the first missionary appointed by the newly formed WBHMS in 1877 and was in the first graduating class of its Baptist Missionary Training School in Chicago in 1888. Moore's life was transparent in the themes of innovation, evangelism, education, ecumenism, networking, and social engagement. In 1902, she published her autobiography, In Christ's Stead. Joanna Moore died in Selma, Alabama, on April 15, 1916.
