Robert P. “Bob” Moses, who crusaded for civil rights and later math training, dies at 86 | Richmond Free Press

Robert P. “Bob” Moses, a civil rights activist who was shot at the head of the registration campaigns for black voters in the South during the 1960s, who suffered beatings and jails and who later helped improve minority education in math, died on Sunday 25th July 2021.

He was 86.

Mr. Moses worked as the field director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Mississippi to break down segregation during the civil rights movement and was central to the 1964 “Summer of Freedom” when hundreds of students traveled south to register voters.

Mr. Moses began his “second chapter in civil rights work” by founding the Algebra Project in 1982 thanks to a MacArthur Fellowship. The project included a curriculum that Mr. Moses developed to help students with difficulties in math.

Ben Moynihan, director of operations for the Algebra Project, said Mr Moses’ wife, Dr. Janet Moses, told him her husband died in Hollywood, Florida. No information was given on the cause of death.

“Bob Moses was a hero of mine. His calm self-confidence has shaped the civil rights movement and inspired generations of young people who want to make a difference, ”said former President Obama on Twitter.

Mr. Moses is the youngest African American leader of the era to die last year, including Rep. John Lewis, Vernon Jordan, Rev. CT Vivian, Charles Evers, and Gloria Richardson.

“He was a strategist at the core of the voting movement and beyond. He was a giant, ”wrote Derrick Johnson, president of the national NAACP, on Twitter.

Mr. Moses was born in Harlem, NY, on January 23, 1935, two months after a racial riot left three dead and 60 injured in the neighborhood. His grandfather, William Henry Moses, was a prominent Southern Baptist preacher and a supporter of Marcus Garvey, a black nationalist leader at the turn of the century.

Like many black families, the Moses family moved from the south to the north during the Great Migration. In Harlem, his family sold milk from a black-owned cooperative to supplement the household income, according to Laura Visser-Maessen’s Robert Parris Moses: A Life in Civil Rights and Leadership at the Grassroots.

Mr. Moses did not spend much time in the deep south until he went on a recruiting trip in 1960 to “see the movement for himself”. He sought the Southern Christian Leadership Conference from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Atlanta, found little activity in the office and soon turned to the SNCC.

“I was taught how to deny the right to vote behind the Iron Curtain in Europe,” Moses later said. “I never knew there was (the) denial of voting rights behind a cotton curtain here in the United States.”

The young civil rights activist tried to register black people in rural Amite County, Mississippi, where he was beaten and arrested. When he tried to bring charges against a white assailant, an all-white jury acquitted the man, and a judge offered Mr. Moses protection from the county line so that he could leave.

In 1963, he and two other activists, James Travis and Randolph Blackwell, were driving in Greenwood, Miss. When someone opened fire on them and 20-year-old Mr. Travis was hit. In a SNCC press release, Mr. Moses described bullets hissing around them and how he took the wheel when Mr. Travis was hit and the car stopped.

“We were all inches away from being killed,” said Mr. Moses in the 1963 press release.

A recurring theme in Mr. Moses’ life and work has been the need to listen to and collaborate with local people as activists sought to make change, whether it be registering black voters in some of Mississippi’s most determined anti-integration neighborhoods or years later Students and teachers work together to find ways to improve their math skills.

In an interview with the National Visionary Leadership Project, he spoke about the need for civil rights activists to gain the trust of local Mississippi people.

“You had to earn the right for the Mississippi black population to choose that they would work with you because why risk anything to work with you when you were someone or a group of people who just did it weren’t serious? ”he said.

He later helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which attempted to challenge the all-white Democratic delegation from Mississippi to the 1964 Democratic National Convention. But President Lyndon B. Johnson prevented the rebel Democratic group from voting in the convention and instead left Jim Crow-Southerner, which drew national attention.

Disaffected by the white liberal reaction to the civil rights movement, Mr. Moses soon began to take part in demonstrations against the Vietnam War, then severed all relations with whites, even with former SNCC members.

Mr. Moses moved to Canada in 1967 to avoid conscription and then worked as a teacher in Tanzania, Africa for several years. He returned to Harvard University for a PhD in philosophy and taught mathematics in Cambridge, Massachusetts high school. He later taught math in Jackson, Miss. While commuting to Massachusetts on the weekends.

Press-shy Mr. Moses began his “second chapter in civil rights work” by founding the algebra project in 1982, Populations. Mr. Moynihan of the Algebra Project said Mr. Moses saw the math improvement work as an extension of the civil rights work he started in the 1960s.

“Bob really saw the issue of giving young people hope through access to math skills as a matter of citizenship, as critical as the right to vote,” said Moynihan.

Ernesto Cortés Jr., director emeritus and senior advisor to the Industrial Areas Foundation, which helps develop community organizers, worked with Mr. Moses for over four decades during which Mr. Moses attended seminars and training.

Mr. Cortés said Mr. Moses was not talking quickly and was very attentive and thoughtful. One of the most important lessons Mr. Moses taught was his “steadfastness” – holding on to a goal despite being repeatedly struck down – and his generosity.

“Bob has always made sure to develop other people and give them credit and give them what they deserve,” said Cortés.