Stan Moore remembers when the U.S. Census count involved punching paper cards for each household. It was just before the 1960 count, the nation’s population was around 170 million, and he was one of the only men of color working for the Census Bureau.
Stan Moore remembers when the U.S. Census count involved punching paper cards for each household. It was just before the 1960 count, the nation’s population was around 170 million, and he was one of the only men of color working for the Census Bureau.
Since those days, Moore has tabulated five population counts with ever-changing technologies, tracked diversifying communities and watched the U.S. population swell to over 300 million. As the federal agency’s longest-serving employee, Moore is gearing up for his sixth and final tally: the 2010 Census.
"This has been my life," said the impeccably dressed man who is the bureau’s regional director in Chicago. While sitting at his office table covered with color-coded maps, he recalled all the U.S. presidents he has worked under. "I can almost go back to President Truman."
Working for 11 presidents and being a behind-the-scenes organizer of the Census for more than five decades has given Moore a front-row seat to history.
His first official assignment came in 1960 when he joined the Census to help program the world’s first computer that weighed eight tons and was the size of a one-car garage. He has been at the forefront of helping create a national digital database that maps out neighborhoods and has overseen the implementation of census workers using GPS handheld computers — all with his trademark community-focused approach.
Official Census counts, mandated by the Constitution, are used to determine how $300 billion in federal funds are distributed. The data also help decide where to draw congressional districts.
"If you need good schools, health care or transportation in your community, all that money is based on Census figures," Moore said. "If you’re not cooperating, another city will have a good living standard where your city won’t."
Ever since he became a regional director in 1976, Moore has pushed for a community-first approach.
In his early days, Census workers used phone books to get addresses and then walked neighborhood streets to verify them.
"We missed a lot of addresses in those days," he said. So Moore met with post office officials to develop a more efficient process.
He didn’t stop there.
He met with mayors, pastors and school leaders to help promote the importance of the Census, making sure each understood the stakes of not participating.
Those informal meetings were the first inklings of what the agency now calls the Complete Count Committee, groups that are crucial to ensuring the operations of the Census — mapping out households, confirming addresses, mailing forms and going door knocking when they don’t get mailed back — run smoothly.
"He understands some of the subtleties, the nature of our work and the technical aspects, but he related it to the community in a way I had never had any experience," said Dwight Dean, the bureau’s regional director in Detroit who has long known Moore. "It was a pioneer way to do PR using community."
For example, in his three-state region Moore has pushed for hiring temporary Census workers to work in the neighborhoods they live in. That means neighbors are looking out for neighbors, he says.
Moore also gets ex-pro football players to talk to schools about the importance of the Census, and he sends letters to each of the 6,433 mayors in his region that covers Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana.
His work with alderman and mayors has earned him some recognition. There’s a street — Stanley D. Moore Way — named after him on Chicago‘s southwest side.
The Washington, D.C.-area native has an air of formality, usually dressing in a suit and tie. He is addressed by most, even some friends, as "Mr. Moore." Moore, who has flecks of great hair, doesn’t drink and refuses to give his age, jokingly insisting that he has worked at the Census bureau "since kindergarten."
It was in the early 1950s when Moore’s high school civics teacher told his class that African-Americans were undercounted in the Census. That day inspired Moore, who is Black, to take an internship with the agency. He said wanted to ensure he could help other minorities be counted. Then in 1956, he joined the Internal Revenue Service but did more Census projects involving computer programming before officially moving to the agency.
Moore, who has two degrees from Northeastern Illinois University, has also been called on to handle Census crisis’s as well.
Before the 1980 Census, a major fire destroyed a New York office and wiped out thousands of records. Moore was chosen to go into the office and re-document all the information in less than three months before a federally mandated deadline.
Moore, who is married with four children, has few plans for retirement, so far. He knows he’ll continue to attend his granddaughter’s basketball games.
But for now, he’s more focused on the 2010 count and gearing up late March of next year, when forms will be mailed out to households.
His final Census count comes when the agency is receiving criticism from activists and the Government Accountability Office.
Earlier this year, the GAO reported that the Census is behind schedule due to budget cuts and lacks a clear plan for improving the count of minorities.
They are issues Moore is well aware of, but he said he is constantly trying to improve the way the Census gets done. In the coming months, he has 38 temporary offices to open throughout the region and has hired former Bears players Otis Wilson and Wendall Davis, among others, to go to elementary schools to talk about the Census.
"It’s a wonderful job," he said.
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