Robert Parris Moses

Robert Parris Moses (January 23, 1935 – July 25, 2021) was an American educator and civil rights activist known for his work as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) on voter education and registration in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement, and his co-founding of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. As part of his work with the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a coalition of the Mississippi branches of the four major civil rights organizations (SNCC, CORE, NAACP, SCLC), he was the main organizer for the Freedom Summer Project. He spent the 1960s working in the civil rights and anti-war movements, until he was drafted in 1966 and left the country, spending much of the following decade in Tanzania, teaching and working with the Ministry of Education.

After returning to the US, in 1982, Moses received a MacArthur Fellowship and began developing the Algebra Project. The math literacy program emphasizes teaching algebra skills to minority students based on broad-based community organizing and collaboration with parents, teachers, and students, to improve college and job readiness.

Early life Robert Parris Moses was born January 23, 1935, in New York City. His parents, Gregory H. Moses, a janitor, and Louise (Parris) Moses, a homemaker, raised their three children in the public housing complex, Harlem River Houses, with frequent visits to the public library. and received his B.A. from Hamilton College in 1956. At Hamilton he majored in philosophy and French and played basketball.

Civil rights movement

Moses described his civil rights activism starting in the spring of 1960, when he visited his uncle, Hampton Institute professor of architecture William Henry Moses Jr. and witnessed Hampton students marching from the college to Newport News, Virginia as part of the sit-in movement. Moses went on to becoming field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Following the direction of Ella Baker, Initiating and organizing voter registration drives as well as sit-ins and Freedom Schools, Moses pushed for the SNCC to engage in a "tactical nonviolence," a matter he discussed in an interview with Robert Penn Warren for the book Who Speaks for the Negro?.

Moses faced nearly relentless violence and official intimidation and was beaten and arrested in Amite County.

By 1964 Moses had become co-director of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), an umbrella organization for the major civil rights groups working in Mississippi (SNCC, CORE, NAACP, SCLC). 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, 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 murdered: James Chaney, a local African American, and his two Jewish co-leaders Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, both from New York City. The remaining volunteers were frightened, and Moses gathered them together to discuss the risks they faced. He said that now that they had seen first-hand what could happen, they had every right to go home, and no one would blame them for leaving. This was not the first murder of activists in the South, but the Civil Rights Movement had attracted increasing notice from the national media. Many African-American volunteers were angered that publicity appeared to be based on two of the victims being white Northerners. Moses helped ease tensions. The volunteers struggled with the idea of nonviolence, of blacks and whites working together, and related issues. Moses's leadership was a major cohesive factor for a number of volunteers staying.

Moses became one of the influential black leaders of the civil rights struggle and had a vision of grassroots and community-based leadership. Although Moses' leadership style was different from Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s, King appreciated the contributions that Moses made to the movement, calling them inspiring.

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. Lyndon Johnson and the Democratic leadership nonetheless prevented any of the MFDP delegation from voting in the convention, giving the official seats to the Jim Crow regulars. Moses and the rest of the SNCC activists were profoundly disillusioned by this decision.

In late 1964, Moses resigned his role in COFO, saying later that his role had become "too strong, too central, so that people who did not need to, began to lean on me, to use me as a crutch", and began participating in the effort to end the Vietnam War. Following a trip to Africa in 1965, Moses developed a conviction in the necessity of autonomous Black struggle and by 1966 he ceased working with white activists, even former SNCC activists. though he was five years too old for the age cutoff and suspected the intervention of government agents. and had three of their four children. Moses worked as a math teacher as well as for the Ministry of Education.

In 1982 Moses received a MacArthur Fellowship. Moses believed that algebra in particular was a critical "gatekeeper" subject because mastering it was necessary in order for middle school students to advance in math, technology, and science; college was out of reach without it. he told The New York Times in 2001. For example, the Algebra Project developed a cooperating project called Young People's Project, to help engage students in their learning process and their communities: "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." The organization received another NSF grant in 2016. More than 40,000 students in the US have been taught using the program.

Continued work in education In 2001, Moses and fellow activist and journalist Charles E. Cobb Jr. published Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project, about Moses's life and work in civil rights and education. As a visiting scholar at Princeton University, he taught an African American Studies class with Professor Tera Hunter in the Spring 2012 semester.

He was identified as a Teaching hero by The My Hero Project.

Death

Moses died on Sunday July 25, 2021. His death was confirmed by Algebra Project staff but no details were provided. His funeral was held at St. Mary of the Assumption Catholic Church in Cambridge.

Works Radical Equations—Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project (with Charles E. Cobb Jr.) (Beacon Press, 2001) 1997, War Resisters League Peace Award 1999, 6th Annual Heinz Award in the Human Condition 2001, chapter foundation member, Phi Beta Kappa, University of Mississippi 2001, Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship 2001, Margaret Chase Smith American Democracy Award 2001, honorary doctor of humane letters, Grinnell College 2002, James Bryant Conant Award 2004, honorary doctor of laws, Princeton University 2005, Alphonse Fletcher Sr. Fellowship 2006, honorary doctor of science, Harvard University 2007, honorary degree, Swarthmore College 2016, honorary doctor of humane letters, University of Missouri