Civil Rights pioneer, education advocate Bob Moses dies at 86

2nd August 2021   ·   0 Comments

By Fritz Esker
Contributing Writer

Bob Moses, the civil rights activist and educator who played a vital role in 1964’s “Freedom Summer” voter registration drive, passed away on Sunday, July 25. He was 86.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama shared his thoughts about Moses on Twitter. “Bob Moses was a hero of mine. His quiet confidence helped shape the civil rights movement, and he inspired generations of young people looking to make a difference,” Obama tweeted.

“He was a person of passion and compassion,” said longtime friend and collaborator David Dennis, a native Louisianan. “He was committed to doing what he could to bring justice to people.”

Born Robert Parris Moses in 1935 in Harlem, Moses earned his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Hamilton College in 1956 before receiving a master’s degree in philosophy from Harvard University in 1957.

In an interview for the documentary “Eyes on the Prize,” Moses spoke of his introduction to the Civil Rights Movement in February of 1960 when he was a math teacher. The pictures he saw in The New York Times every day prompted him to visit Hampton University, where his uncle was teaching. After hearing Wyatt Walker speak in a rally at Newport News, Moses signed up to help promote a Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) rally in New York City.

Moses would then travel to Mississippi to fight for Black voting rights. He directed the SNCC Mississippi Voter Registration Project from 1961-1964. He said he faced organized opposition at the state level. With local cops and judges aligned against them, many Blacks were hesitant to exercise their voting rights.

“We had workshops for several weeks before we could get a handful who would agree to go,” Moses said in “Eyes on the Prize.”

“Once we got the handful to go, they would go if we went with them. And our position was that if the people wanted us to go with them, we would go with them…I think they felt some sense of security, and clearly, we were acting as some kind of buffer because the initial physical violence was always directed at us.”

During his efforts, Moses was assaulted and arrested. He filed charges against a white assailant only to see the man acquitted by an all-white jury. The judge provided protection for Moses so he could reach the county line and leave. He was also shot at while driving through Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1963 (fellow activist James Travis was hit and injured).

After teaching in Africa for several years, Moses returned to America and received a fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation in 1982. He used the fellowship to start the Algebra Project, which works with underperforming math students to help them graduate high school and prepare them to take math for college credit.

Moses further explored his passion for both mathematics and civil rights in the 2001 book “Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project” (co-written with Charles E. Cobb Jr.).

“Education is still basically Jim Crow as far as the kids who are in the bottom economic strata of the country,” Moses told NPR in a 2013 interview. “No one knows about them, no one cares about them.”

The Algebra Project released a statement on Moses on its website, which included the following: “…His transition to that higher level only inspires us all to love, struggle and live with and for our people as he did, as we continue to work to realize Bob’s vision of ‘raising the floor of mathematics literacy’ for all young people in the United States of America.”

Dennis, who is the executive director of the Southern Initiative of the Algebra Project, said he spoke on the phone with Moses on July 23. He said Moses, who had been living in hospice care for about two months, was as passionate as ever when discussing educational reforms. Just a month ago, Moses made a Zoom presentation on the subject to Dillard University and Xavier University students.

Dennis said Moses was dedicated to improving teacher pay in underprivileged school districts, especially for STEM teachers because STEM professionals often avoid working in education because the pay is so low. Moses also wanted better libraries, better testing, and more cultural exposure for underprivileged students.

“The best we can we do for people like Bob Moses, Medgar Evers, and A.L. Davis is to continue the work they started,” Dennis said. “They may be gone, but their legacy lives on.”

Moses is survived by his wife, Dr. Janet Jemmott Moses, four children, Maisha, Omo, Taba and Malaika, and his seven grandchildren.

This article originally published in the August 2, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.