A dramatic family history that Maryland’s Democrat Governor Wes Moore has frequently shared on the campaign trail is being challenged by historical records, indicating that the story may have been fabricated.
Gov. Moore’s claims have been debunked in an investigative report by journalist Andrew Kerr in the Washington Free Beacon.
Moore, who is widely viewed as a potential Democrat presidential contender in 2028, has repeatedly described how his grandfather fled South Carolina as a child in the 1920s after the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) allegedly targeted the family.
In Moore’s telling, his great-grandfather, a black minister, angered the Klan with sermons condemning racism, forcing the family to escape Charleston in the middle of the night to avoid a lynching before resettling in Jamaica.
Moore first shared the story in a 2014 memoir and has continued recounting it publicly, including during his successful 2022 gubernatorial campaign, framing the episode as a defining example of injustice and perseverance in American history.
But Kerr reported that historical documentation contradicts Moore’s account on key details.
Church archives confirm Moore’s maternal great-grandfather, the Rev. Josiah Johnson Thomas, preached in South Carolina in the early 1920s at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Pineville, roughly 65 miles north of Charleston.
Those same records, however, show no evidence that Thomas fled secretly, was pursued by the Ku Klux Klan, or delivered sermons that provoked KKK retaliation.
Episcopal Church records and contemporaneous newspaper coverage cited by the Free Beacon indicate Thomas formally transferred to Jamaica on December 13, 1924, returning to the island of his birth to succeed a prominent pastor who had died unexpectedly.
No documentation suggests his departure was sudden, covert, or driven by threats.
While the Ku Klux Klan operated openly in parts of South Carolina during the 1920s, it never maintained a chapter in Pineville, according to Virginia Commonwealth University’s Mapping of the Second Ku Klux Klan project.
Moore has expanded the story in later retellings.
During a 2020 appearance on Andrew Yang’s podcast, he said the Klan ran his grandfather and “the rest of my family out of this country, not just out of Charleston, South Carolina.”
Time magazine later reported in 2023 that Moore’s great-grandfather was “targeted for lynching.”
Moore repeated that version in a commencement address last May at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.
“Being black and outspoken was a crime—even if it wasn’t on the books,” Moore said.
“So, in the middle of the night, they fled.
“My grandfather may have been just a boy… but he never forgot what happened that night.”
Church transfer records reviewed by the Free Beacon describe a routine ecclesiastical process requiring approval from multiple church authorities, showing no indication of urgency or danger.
“Typically, when a clergy member moves from one diocese to another, it is at the request of the clergy member, who works in concert with the new parish,” Amy Evenson, an archivist at the national Episcopal Archives in Austin, Texas, told the outlet.
“All parties must agree that the move is advantageous, which is then approved by the Bishop.”
Reporting from Jamaica’s Daily Gleaner similarly described Thomas’s return as ordinary, noting he “laboured in the States for a number of years, and like many other Jamaicans, he has returned to his native land to work among his people.”
The coverage made no mention of threats, racial violence, or the Ku Klux Klan.
Thomas soon resumed public life in Jamaica and was appointed a marriage officer by the island’s governor, according to the newspaper.
The Free Beacon also reported no evidence supporting Moore’s claim that Thomas’s sermons drew Klan retaliation.
In 1924, South Carolina Bishop William Guerry described the Pineville congregation as well regarded by the surrounding white community and later reported the church’s “colored work” was “in a most prosperous condition,” again without reference to intimidation or violence.
Kerr’s reporting adds to prior scrutiny of Moore’s biography.
The Free Beacon has previously reported that Moore falsely claimed he was born and raised in Baltimore, said he was inducted into a Maryland College Football Hall of Fame that does not exist, and asserted he received a Bronze Star he did not earn.
He has also cited academic credentials at Oxford University that he has been unable to document.
Historical records surrounding Moore’s great-grandfather are extensive and detailed.
Taken together, they depict a routine church transfer and a respected clergyman returning home, not a family fleeing Ku Klux Klan violence under cover of darkness.
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