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Wess Moore (born 1978) has taken his own place in the history of American politics. He is Maryland’s first Black governor in its 246-year history and the third Black person elected governor of a U.S. state since Reconstruction.

“It’s humbling because this is the state of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and Thurgood Marshall,” Moore, a Takoma Park, Maryland native, told USA Today. “It shows that progress requires work, but it is possible as long as we’re willing to grow together.”

Moore described Election night in 2022 as “a celebration,” although he was “soaking in the moment,” thinking of his maternal grandmother, Winell Thomas, who died five days before the election.

Thomas helped raise Moore after his father, a broadcast journalist bearing the same name, died. About his grandmother’s faith in his future, Moore said: “If you had asked her when I was young if there was a chance this could have happened, she would have said yes.”

But earlier on, Moore would have disagreed. After his father’s death, Moore’s family relocated to the Bronx to live with his grandparents. Life without his father was difficult; he felt as if he didn’t fit anywhere.

Thomas enrolled Moore in an elite prep school at age 6. But coming home to the Bronx after being with wealthy classmates made him feel out of place. He’d become angry. Later, about age 11, he became truant and was placed in a squad car and arrested for tagging walls with graffiti. Moore told the MinnPost that his mother, Joy Moore, then “begged her parents to take out a loan against their house so she could send [me] to a military boarding school.”

By age 13, Moore was enrolled in Valley Forge Military Academy and College. The experience pushed him to put his life back on track. He worked as an intern for then-Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke and later graduated from Johns Hopkins University. Moore earned a Rhodes Scholarship, which led him to earn his master’s in international relations from Wolfson College at Oxford.

In 2005, Moore deployed to Afghanistan as a captain with the 82nd Airborne Division, tasked to lead soldiers in combat. On returning, he served as a White House Fellow.

“My mother and grandmother believed in me and sacrificed for me,” Moore told USA Today about the encouragement he received from family. “That election moment was a testament to that sacrifice.”

There’s an imposter syndrome with children of color, Moore says, where “you’re waiting for someone to tap you on the shoulder and say, ‘Hey, how’d you get in here?’”

Moore wants every child of color to know that “they are never in a room because of someone’s benevolence, kindness or social experiment. They’re in that room because they belong there.”

An intimate narrative about finding meaning in a volatile age, Wess Moore’s “The Work: Searching for a Life that Matters” will inspire readers to see how we can each find our own path to purpose and help create a better world.

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