Robert Parris 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. 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, despite many people leaving in the Great Migration
in the first half of the century, they had been utterly closed out of the political process
since 1890. 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 under Jim Crow, 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. He was the first
African American to challenge white violence, and filed assault charges against his attacker.
The all-white jury acquitted the man, and the judge told Moses he could not protect
him, providing him an escort to the county line. The next month in September 1961, E.H.
Hurst, a white state legislator, killed Herbert Lee, a 52-year-old married local farmer in
Liberty, Mississippi, 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;
the courtroom was filled with armed white men. 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, an umbrella
organization for the major civil rights groups 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. They 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
to discuss it; he told the group this was the risk they faced. He said that now that
they had seen first-hand what could happen, they had every right to go home. He assured
volunteers that no one would blame them for leaving. Everyone 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 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. These tensions were enormous,
but arguably, Moses's leadership 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, 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. 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. Moses was also disturbed by the machinations of liberal
Democrats, who he had invited into COFO, to centralize its decision-making, an effort
that seemed to undermine the grassroots participatory democracy of SNCC.
Moses resigned from COFO in late 1964. He later commented 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’’. He temporarily dropped his surname, going by his middle name, Parris,
and began participating in the campaign against the Vietnam War. Speaking at the ﬁrst massive
anti-war demonstration on 17 April 1965 at the Washington Monument, Moses linked his
opposition to the war to the civil rights struggle. As his involvement in the anti-war
movement increased, he took a leave of absence from SNCC to avoid criticisms from fellow
members who did not support his stance. Following a trip to Africa in 1965 Moses came to believe
that blacks must work independently of whites, and by 1966 Moses had cut off all relationships
with whites, even former SNCC activists.
In 1976 Moses returned to the United States and 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
underserved 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 Co-editor, Quality Education as a Constitutional
Right- Creating a Grassroots Movement to Transform Public Schools
Legacy and honors 1982, MacArthur Fellowship
2006, Honorary Doctor of Science, Harvard University
See also List of civil rights leaders
References
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