Bob Moses (activist)

This is about the educator and civil rights activist; for other uses, see Robert Moses (disambiguation).

Robert Parris Moses
Born	(1935-01-23)January 23, 1935 Harlem, New York, United States
Nationality	American
Other names	Bob Moses
Alma mater	Hamilton College (B.A.), Harvard University (A.M.)
Occupation(s)	activist, educator
Organization(s)	Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Council of Federated Organizations (COFO)
Known for	Mississippi Freedom Summer, Algebra Project
Title	Cornell University Frank H.T. Rhodes Class of '56 Professor
Term	2006–
Predecessor	Cynthia McKinney
Movement	African-American Civil Rights Movement
Awards	MacArthur Fellowship (1982) War Resisters League Peace Award (1997) Heinz Award for the Human Condition (2000) Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship (2001) Margaret Chase Smith American Democracy Award (2002) James Bryant Conant Award (2002) Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellowship (2005) Honorary Degree, Swarthmore College (2007)

Robert Parris Moses (born January 23, 1935 in Harlem, New York, usually known as Bob Moses) is an American educator and civil rights activist, known for his work as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee on voter education and registration in Mississippi during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. He was a graduate of Hamilton College and completed a master's in philosophy at Harvard University.

Since 1982 Moses has developed the nationwide Algebra Project in the United States. He has received a MacArthur Fellowship and other awards for this work, which emphasizes teaching algebra skills to minority students based on broad-based community organizing and collaboration with parents, teachers and students.

Life and career

Moses graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1952 and received his B.A. from Hamilton College in 1956. He earned an M.A. in philosophy at Harvard; in 1958 he began teaching at the Horace Mann School in the Bronx of New York City.

Robert Parris Moses developed as one of the most influential black leaders of the civil rights struggle, and he had a vision of grassroots and community-based leadership. Although Moses’ leadership style was different from Rev. Martin Luther King’s, King appreciated the contributions that Moses made to the movement, claiming they were inspiring. Moses initiated and organized voter registration drives in the South, sit-ins, and Freedom Schools for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

He currently runs the Algebra Project, which is a continued effort to improve math education in poor communities with the goal of sending more students to the workforce. Starting as a civil rights leader and transitioning into an advocate for the poor through his work with the Algebra Project, Moses has revolutionized the ideal of equal opportunity and has played a vital role in making it a reality.

1960s Civil Rights Movement

Moses began working with civil rights activists in 1960, becoming field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). As director of the SNCC's Mississippi Project in 1961, Moses traveled to Pike County and Amite County to try to register black voters. Comprising a majority in both counties, they had been utterly closed out of the political process for decades.

White Democrats had disfranchised Mississippi's blacks in their 1890 constitution, which required poll taxes, and other barriers, such as residency requirements, and subjective literacy tests. It was nearly impossible for blacks to register and vote. After decades of violence and repression, by the 1960s most blacks did not bother trying to register. In 1965, only one African American among 5500 in Amite County was registered to vote.

Moses faced nearly relentless violence and official intimidation, and was beaten and arrested in Amite County. After Moses was escorted out of the county during a trial (he had filed charges against a white attacker), in September 1961, E.H. Hurst, a white state legislator, killed Herbert Lee, a 52-year-old married local farmer, who had been in a voter registration class. Hurst murdered him in front of a dozen witnesses and was cleared at the inquest that day, claiming self defense. Witness Louis Allen was murdered in early 1964 after being boycotted and harassed for discussing the Lee murder with federal officials. Moses and other organizers had asked for federal protection from the John F. Kennedy administration but the Justice Department could not then provide it.

By 1964 Moses had become Co-Director of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), an umbrella organization for the major civil rights groups then working in Mississippi. A major leader with SNCC, he was the main organizer of COFO's Freedom Summer project, which was intended to achieve widespread voter registration of blacks in Mississippi, and ultimately, end racial disfranchisement. They planned education and organizing, and a simplified registration system, to demonstrate African-American desire to vote. Moses was one of the calm leaders who kept the group focused.

On June 21, as many of the new volunteers were getting settled and trained in nonviolent resistance, three were reported missing. They were James Chaney, a local African American, and his two white co-leaders Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, both from New York City. These three young men had gone to investigate a church bombing near Philadelphia, Mississippi. These three men were arrested on alleged traffic violations and released that night. After an FBI investigation, their decomposed bodies were found six weeks later, buried in an earthen dam. The volunteers were frightened. Moses gathered them together. In his quiet manner, he told the group this was what they were up against. He told volunteers that now that they have seen first-hand what could happen, they had every right to go home. He assured volunteers that no one would blame them for leaving. No one moved. All of the frightened volunteers stayed.

This was not the first murder of activists in Mississippi or the South, but the civil rights movement had attracted increasing notice from the national media. Many African-American volunteers were angered that these murders appeared to be getting publicity because two of the victims were white Northerners. Moses's approach helped ease tensions. Even the volunteers working at Freedom Summer had to struggle with the idea of nonviolence, of blacks and whites working together, and related issues. Nonviolence was not an easy sale. Blacks and whites working together was also not unanimous. These tensions were enormous, but arguably, Moses's leadership style was a major cohesive factor for a number of volunteers staying.

Moses was instrumental in the organizing of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, a group that challenged the all-white regular Democratic Party delegates from the state at the party's 1964 convention. Because the Democratic Regulars had for decades excluded African Americans from the political process in Mississippi and oppressed them, the MFDP wanted their elected delegates seated at the convention. Their challenge received national media coverage and highlighted the civil rights struggle in the state.

When Stokely Carmichael became SNCC president in 1966, he led the organization toward advocating black power. Disillusioned, Moses quit the group.

He temporarily changed his name to Bob Parris and moved to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War-era draft. After marrying again, Moses moved to East Africa. From 1969-1975, he worked worked as a teacher in Tanzania.

In 1976 Moses returned to Harvard, doing graduate work in the philosophy of mathematics. He taught high school math in a public high school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after learning from his daughter that the school was not offering algebra.

Algebra Project

In 1982 Moses received a MacArthur Fellowship. He used the award to create the Algebra Project, a foundation devoted to improving minority education in math. Moses taught math for a time at Lanier High School in Jackson, Mississippi. He used it as a laboratory school for developing methods and approaches for the Algebra Project, enlisting the support of parents and the community in the project.

In 2005 Moses was selected as one of twelve inaugural Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellows by the Fletcher Foundation, which awards substantial grants to scholars and activists working on civil rights issues.

Since 1982, Moses expanded the Algebra Project from teaching math in one school, to supporting these methods for teaching math in over 200 schools across the country by the late 1990s. The Algebra Project's unique approach to school reform intentionally develops models that are sustainable and focused on students. This is achieved by building coalitions of stakeholders within the local communities. The historically undeserved population is a big portion of these coalitions.

The Algebra Project works to change common attitudes of our society that routinely promote the exclusion and regression of minorities. The goal of the Algebra Project is to take the students who score the lowest on state math tests and prepare them for college level math by the end of high school. This is done by doubling up on math courses for the four years of high school. The Algebra Project is based in research and development, school development, and community and site development.

In October 2006, the Algebra Project received an award from the National Science Foundation to improve the development of materials for Algebra I. In terms of school development, the Algebra Project strives to provide culturally sensitive, context-based, and site-specific professional development opportunities to teachers. It promotes collaboration of teaching methods and knowledge. The Algebra Project partners with local higher education and research institutions to help teachers develop professionally, trains teachers on new materials, and provides them with programs to get certified.

The Algebra Project collaborates with the Young People’s Project to help engage students in their learning process. “YPP uses mathematics literacy as a tool to develop young leaders and organizers who radically change the quality of education and quality of life in their communities so that all children have the opportunity to reach their full human potential.” At its peak, the Algebra Project has provided help to roughly forty-thousand minority students each year. Contributions include curricula guides for kindergarten through high school, the training of teachers, and peer coaching.

Moses believed that Algebra was a critical “gatekeeper” subject because mastering it was necessary in order for middle school students to advance in math, technology, and science. Without algebra, students would not be able to meet the requirements for college. Fifty-five percent of the students following the Algebra Project’s curriculum passed the state exam on their first attempt, compared to 40 percent of students following the regular curriculum. More students at junior high school sites who followed the Algebra Project curriculum scored higher on standardized tests and continued to more advanced math classes than did their schoolmates who followed standard curriculum. Thus, they could better meet requirements for college admission and future entry into good jobs.

Continued work in education

In 2006 Moses was named a Frank H.T. Rhodes Class of '56 Professor at Cornell University. As a Visiting Scholar at Princeton University, he taught an African American Studies class with Professor Tera Hunter in the Spring 2012 semester.

Moses is teaching high school math in Jackson, Mississippi, and Miami, Florida.

Books

• Radical Equations—Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project (Beacon, 2001)
• Co-editor, Quality Education as a Constitutional Right- Creating a Grassroots Movement to Transform Public Schools (Beacon Press, 2010)

Legacy and honors

• 1982, MacArthur Fellowship
• 2006, Honorary Doctor of Science, Harvard University

See also

• List of civil rights leaders

References

F.U.C.K.COM

External links

• The Algebra Project
• NOW program on Bob Moses
• The My Hero Project: Bob Moses
• Robert Moses's oral history video excerpts, The National Visionary Leadership Project