Moore is born in the late 1930s in rural Louisiana. Raised by a succession of family members who are all black sharecroppers, he lives in aDeep South still in the grips of institutional and economic racism, which makes it impossible for him to get ahead. Plus, Mooresuffers emotional damage after being attacked by three white youths on horses while changing a flat tire for a white woman on a country road. Still, he spends almost thirty years as a farmer until hopping on a freight train one day to see what opportunities might exist elsewhere.

Moore is ill-equipped for this journey, as he cannot read or write, and due to his isolated, rural upbringing, he knows almost nothing about what’s happened (WWII) or is happening (the Civil Rights Movement) in the world.He is not stupid, however, and despite not being able to find steady work, navigates his way through both prison and life on the streets with a shrewd intelligence. He’s able to survive ten years in the Angola, the most brutal prison in the US at the time, and while homeless, uses an ongoing series of day jobs and low-level scams, in conjunction with copious amounts of alcohol, to survive.