Report Questions Democrat MD Gov. Wes Moore’s Claim About His Family’s History ‘Fleeing’ the KKK
Maryland Governor Wes Moore (D) used a story about his grandfather and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) to help bolster his political career, which many believe includes a White House bid.
In a sweeping Hollywood-like saga, Moore claimed that his great-grandfather, Rev. James Thomas, a minister in Winnsboro, South Carolina, was forced to flee the States with his family, including Moore’s grandfather, who was just a boy, and return to his native Jamaica after being threatened by the klan.
Moore first shared the story in his 2014 memoir. Since then, he has repeated many times and used it to help shape a narrative to aid his political ambitions.
In 2023, he told Time Magazine in an interview as ‘Person of the Week, “I am literally the grandson of someone who was run out of this country by the Ku Klux Klan, right?”
“Right? So the fact that I can be both this grandson of someone who was run outta this country by the Ku Klux Klan, and also be the first Black governor in the history of the state of Maryland.”
More recently, during a commencement speech at Lincoln University in 2025, Moore said his grandfather was “chased away by the Ku Klux Klan” because “my great-grandfather was a vocal minister in the community.”
“This school created a way for me… because you created a way for James Thomas, my grandfather.”
“He was born in South Carolina, the child of Jamaican immigrants new to the United States.”
“But when my grandfather was just a child, he and his parents fled back to Jamaica. They were chased away by the Ku Klux Klan.”
“You see, his father, my great-grandfather was a vocal minister in the community.
Being Black and outspoken was a crime – even if it wasn’t on the books.”
“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.”
A report from The Washington Free Beacon’s Andrew Kerr, however, casts doubt on Moore’s version of the story, noting, “there’s a problem with Moore’s story: It’s flatly contradicted by historical records and is almost certainly false.”
The report states that historical records from the Protestant Episcopal Church, along with contemporary newspaper accounts, show Thomas’s departure was neither a secretive nor hurried escape in the middle of the night.
Instead, it was an orderly and publicly documented professional transfer.
Episcopal Church archival records tell a different story. They show that Moore’s great-grandfather was “transferred” from the church he worked at in Pineville, S.C., to Jamaica—then a British colony—on Dec. 13, 1924, to take over for a Jamaican priest who had died. There is no suggestion that the move was hurried or secret, as Moore has stated. Jamaica was a natural fit for Moore’s great-grandfather, who was born on the island in 1880 and held a government-appointed post as a marriage officer in 1914 before his decade-long stay in the United States.
The Episcopal Church’s 1926 annual directory reported that Thomas was one of 12 clergymen transferred from the United States to foreign dioceses in 1925. Thomas’s transfer indicates he completed a formalized process that required the approval of several parties within the Episcopal Church.
“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 Washington Free Beacon. “All parties must agree that the move is advantageous, which is then approved by the Bishop.”
NEW: Maryland Gov. Wes Moore often tells the story of his great-grandfather’s “exile” from South Carolina to Jamaica dead of night to escape a Ku Klux Klan lynching.
Just one problem: the story is flatly contradicted by historical records.
Here’s what actually happened …
— Andrew Kerr (@AndrewKerrNC) February 4, 2026
Moore spokesperson Ammar Moussa responded to a Fox News Digital inquiry about the Washington Free Beacon report, saying, “We’re not going to litigate a family’s century-old oral history with a partisan outlet.”
“The broader reality is not in dispute: intimidation and racial terror were pervasive in the Jim Crow South, and it rarely came with neat documentation. Even Bishop William Alexander Guerry — whom they cite to suggest there was no hostility — was later murdered amid intense backlash tied to his racial equality work. The Governor is focused on doing the job Marylanders elected him to do.”
Read the full report from the Washington Free Beacon here.
The post Report Questions Democrat MD Gov. Wes Moore’s Claim About His Family’s History ‘Fleeing’ the KKK appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.