Biography
Moody was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1882, the son of pharmacist Charles Ernest Moody and his wife Christina Emmeline Ellis. In 1904, he sailed to the United Kingdom to study medicine at King's College London. Having been refused work because of his colour, he started his own medical practice in Peckham in February 1932.
In March 1931 Harold Moody formed the League of Coloured Peoples, which was concerned with racial equality and civil rights in Britain and elsewhere in the world.
He also campaigned against racial prejudice in the armed forces, and is credited with overturning the Special Restriction Order (or Coloured Seamen's Act) of 1925, a discriminatory measure that sought to provide subsidies to merchant shipping employing only British nationals and required alien seamen (many of whom had served the United Kingdom during the First World War) to register with their local police. Many black and Asian British nationals had no proof of identity and were made redundant.
A devout Christian, Moody was active in the Congregational Union, the Colonial Missionary Society (of which he was chairman) and later the Christian Endeavour Union (1936).
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