Randle T Moore

Randle Thomas Moore, Sr. (March 15, 1874 in Mooringsport – September 18, 1957 in Shreveport), was an eminent figure in the development of northwestern Louisiana during the latter part of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. Moore is best known to Louisiana history, of which he was a keen student, for a physical confrontation that he had on the streets of downtown Shreveport with the legendary Huey Pierce Long, Jr.

Of humble origin, Randle Moore was born to John Milton Moore and the former Jennie E. Jones, both Tennessee natives. His father was a farmer; so Moore spent much of his young life helping in the cotton fields. He eventually worked for others in the area at times for as little as fifty cents a day. At sixteen, Moore found work in Texarkana, Texas, as a clerk in a general store, where he stayed for three years. For the next several years, he worked as a store clerk, a grocer, and a shoe salesman.

In 1900, Moore married the former Susan Martha Frost, the daughter and sister, respectively, of eminent Arkansas lumbermen Enoch Wesley and Edwin Ambrose Frost. Randle and Susie had four children: Wesley Frost Moore, Virginia Elizabeth Moore Lewis, Edwin Ambrose Moore, and Randle Moore, Jr.

In 1901, Moore organized the Sabine Lumber Company in Zwolle, a community in Sabine Parish. His interest in lumber was the direct result his marriage to Susan Martha Frost, whose father had founded the Frost-Trigg Lumber Company and, later, the Frost-Johnson Lumber Company. Moore subsequently became the president of the board of the company after the convalescence and subsequent death of his father-in-law.

He had other business interests too, including the then fledgling Kansas City Southern Railway, which acquired the Louisiana and Arkansas Railroad. In addition, he founded, owned, and operated the Commercial Building Company until 1956. He was also the vice president of both the City Savings Bank and Trust and the newly founded Commercial National Bank in Shreveport.

Moore served as a member of the board of trustees of the former Mansfield Female College and Methodist-affiliated Centenary College in Shreveport. He was also president of the Shreveport chapter of the Boy Scouts of America, the president of the Shreveport Chamber of Commerce, director of the Shreveport Young Men's Christian Association as well as director of the Louisiana Methodist Children's Home orphanage in Ruston, the seat of Lincoln Parish.

Moore donated his stately home, constructed in 1920 with the use of Swiss craftsmen, at the southeast corner of Kings Highway and Fairfield Avenue to the City of Shreveport, which converted it into the Randle T. Moore Community Center. Moore's friend James C. Gardner, the mayor of Shreveport from 1954–1958, recalls that Moore asked him to spare some nearby oak trees from being razed to accommodate the widening of Kings Highway. Gardner said that his efforts to maintain the trees "established a trust with him that was shortly to manifest itself." Gardner explained that Moore agreed that upon his death or the passing of Mrs. Moore, whichever occurred last, the home would be donated to the city as a community center provided that parking could be procured "without destroying the beauty of the house and the land."