Math educator and legendary Civil Rights Movement leader Bob Moses organized Black voter-registration efforts and the Freedom Schools made famous during the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer. Photo credit: The Pine Belt News
With sadness, we report the passing of legendary Civil Rights leader Robert “Bob” Moses. He died in Florida on Sunday, July 25, 2021, at the age of 86.
The Chalkboard Hero was born in New York City on January 23, 1935, to a family of modest means. He was raised in the Projects in Harlem. Despite his family’s limited financial resources, Bob earned a scholarship to attend Stuyvesant High School, an elite public high school for gifted boys. Before his graduation in 91952, Bob was elected senior class president and served as the captain of the school’s baseball team.
Upon graduation, Bob earned another scholarship, this time to attend Hamilton College, a prestigious private liberal arts college in Clinton, New York. There he majored in philosophy and participated in both the basketball and baseball programs. After completing the requirements for his Bachelor’s degree in 1956, Bob traveled abroad extensively, workin in a series of Quaker summer camps in Europe and Japan building housing for the poor, harvesting crops for a missionary hospital, and improving facilities for mentally disturbed children. The following year he earned his Master’s degree in Analytic Philosophy from Harvard University.
Bob was teaching at the prestigious Horace Mann High School in the Bronx when he became aware of the student sit-ins that were taking place in Greensboro, North Carolina. He decided to join them, and that decision launched the math educator’s path towards becoming a legendary figure during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. Bob is best known for organizing the Black voter-registration efforts and the Freedom Schools made famous during the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer. This heroic teacher’s revolutionary work, which was not without risk to life and limb, transformed the political power structure of entire communities.
Forty years later, Bob advocated for yet another transformational change: the Algebra Project. When he created this program, Bob asserted that a deficiency in math literacy in poor neighborhoods puts impoverished children at an economic disadvantage. The deficiency makes students unable to compete successfully for jobs in the 21st century. This disenfranchisement, he declared, is as debilitating as lack of personal liberties was prior to the Civil Rights Movement. Bob’s solution was to organize people, community by community, school by school, to overcome the achievement gap. He believed this would give impoverished children the tools they need to claim their share of economic enfranchisement.
Bob described his philosophy in depth in his book, Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project written with fellow Civil Rights worker Charles E. Cobb, Jr. The volume can be found easily and reasonably-priced on amazon. A fascinating read for anyone who is interested in the former Civil Rights leader’s story, either past or present. A chapter about this remarkable teacher is also included in my second book, entitled Chalkboard Heroes: Twelve Courageous Teachers and Their Deeds of Valor. This book is also available on amazon; click on this link to view: Chalkboard Heroes.
