Our Work.
About MMI.
The Mary Moore Institute for Diversity, Humanity & Social Justice (MMI) is a sociological research center and reform collaborative committed to helping our society become the best version of itself. We do this in three ways: by raising awareness of how we, the people are changing, by helping us elevate our humanity and by enlarging the tent - including everyone in the great work of forming "a more perfect union".
We believe that inalienable rights are for all, that everyone has a line in the human story that only their lives can write, and that everyone deserves to not only lead our best lives and be our most authentic selves, but that each of us has the power to make life better for all of us. Our approach is a mixture of direct engagement, movement-building, culture change, activist support, and strategic investment in traditionally overlooked areas. 
Marchers in downtown Birmingham, 1963.
In the grand human story, every life gets to write a line. What's yours going to be? |
About our Namesake.
MMI is named after Mary Charles Moore, the subject of Me and Mary - An African American Grandma, the Grandson She Raised, and the Lessons She Taught Him. Written by the Institute’s founder, the memoir's summary describes her and the book this way:
"Me and Mary tells the story of Mary Moore, a woman of remarkable grace and fortitude, and the life lessons she both learned and passed on. It's about her trials; the barriers she faced in early-twentieth century Birmingham, the most racially oppressive place in America, about being female and colored, poor and Southern, the orphaned daughter of sharecroppers, of coming of age in a culture dominated by the likes of Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind, and racked by the Great Depression. "But it’s also about her triumphs; her quiet dignity even when working as a servant, her unwavering commitment to always see the good in others, and how she left everyone, and the world itself, better than she found it. "Mary's story is that of a southern domestic. Her daily radius was less than five miles, and her role as pastor's wife and mother to anyone who needed mothering, almost entirely behind the scenes. Yet the ripple effects of her life would touch everything from civil rights to race relations, from the AIDS epidemic to the election of the first African American president. And as a result, she reminds us of the deep capacity within all of us; the power to change the world itself." 
- Read a preview online -
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