Harold Moss is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 politician, whose political career has taken place in Tacoma, Washington

Tacoma, Washington

Tacoma is a mid-sized urban port city and the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. The city is on Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, and northwest of Mount Rainier National Park. The population was 198,397, according to...

. He was the first African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 member of that city's city council, its first African American mayor, and the first African American member of the Pierce County

Pierce County, Washington

right|thumb|[[Tacoma, Washington|Tacoma]] - Seat of Pierce CountyPierce County is the second most populous county in the U.S. state of Washington. Formed out of Thurston County on December 22, 1852, by the legislature of Oregon Territory...

 Council. Moss's wife, Bil Moss, has also served on the Tacoma City Council.

Originally from Texas

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

 by way of Michigan

Michigan

Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....

, Ross arrived in Tacoma during the Korean War

Korean War

The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...

 as a member of the National Guard. He first became politically active in the 1950s as a member of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, usually abbreviated as NAACP, is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to...

 (NAACP). He served two terms as branch president, served on Tacoma's first Human Relations Commission (later Human Rights Commission), and in 1968, Moss helped create the Tacoma Urban League and played a key role in securing public funding for its Urban Services Center.

Moss was a dental technician

Dental technician

A dental technologist is a member of the dental team who, upon presciption from a dental clinician, constructs custom made restorative and dental appliances.There are four major disciplines within dental technology...

, and ran a business, Northwest Porcelain Studios. He left this business in the hands of his assistants when he was hired by the Tacoma Chamber of Commerce

Chamber of commerce

A chamber of commerce is a form of business network, e.g., a local organization of businesses whose goal is to further the interests of businesses. Business owners in towns and cities form these local societies to advocate on behalf of the business community...

 and the Tacoma Area Coalition in the spring of 1968 to run the Central Area Employment Office, soliciting jobs for disadvantaged Tacoma-area residents, including the hardcore unemployed. He entered electoral politics in 1969 as an unsuccessful candidate for the Tacoma City Council. A year later, five council members were recalled

Recall election

A recall election is a procedure by which voters can remove an elected official from office through a direct vote before his or her term has ended...

, and Moss was appointed to a seat, which he took on October 13, 1970. He was elected to a full term in 1971, remaining also a full-time employee of the Urban League throughout this period. Urban League National Executive Director Vernon Jordan asked Moss to step down from his elected position in 1975 to avoid compromising the League's non-profit status.

In a September 1978 domestic argument, Moss shot his son in the shoulder with a .38-caliber revolver. "My son was very high at the time," he later said. No charges were ever pressed, and the two later reconciled.

By 1983, Moss was no longer affiliated with the Urban League. That year he ran unsuccessfully for city council. In February 1987 he was appointed to fill a council vacancy, ran that fall for a full term, won, and was reelected in 1991. In January 1994, Tacoma mayor Jack Hyde suffered a fatal heart attack nearly at the start of his term. Moss, serving as deputy mayor at the time, was appointed mayor and served for two years. During his administration, Tacoma adopted a youth curfew

Curfew

A curfew is an order specifying a time after which certain regulations apply. Examples:# An order by a government for certain persons to return home daily before a certain time...

 law. Because the mayor is considered part of the city council, term limits prevented him from running as an incumbent in the 1995 election. During this period, Moss also worked as a civil-rights manager for the Washington State Department of Transportation

Washington State Department of Transportation

The Washington State Department of Transportation , was established in 1905. The agency, led by a Secretary and overseen by the Governor, is a Washington governmental agency that constructs, maintains, and regulates the use of the state's transportation infrastructure...

, handling the council and mayoralty as a part-time job.

Moss was subsequently elected to the Pierce County Council, serving January 1, 1997 – December 31, 2004, including as council chair from 2002 to 2004, at which time he announced his retirement. He ran unsuccessfully for the Tacoma mayoralty in 2001 and came out of that retirement in 2007 to run again for the Tacoma City Council against incumbent Spiro Manthou. Manthou defeated him at the polls.

External links

• Harold Moss, Tacoma Public Library image archives