US civil rights activist Robert Moses dies at age 86 | Civil Rights News

Robert Parris Moses, an American civil rights activist who suffered beatings and jail terms in the 1960s while campaigning black voter registration in the American South and later helping to improve minority education in math, is aged Died 86 years.

Moses worked as field director of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in Mississippi during the civil rights movement to reduce segregation and was central to the 1964 Freedom Summer, when hundreds of students went south to register voters.

Moses began his “second chapter in civil rights work” by founding the Algebra Project in 1982, which included a curriculum that Moses developed to help poor students succeed in math.

Ben Moynihan, the Algebra Project’s director of operations, said he had met with Moses’ wife, Dr. Janet Moses, spoken to, and she said her husband died on Sunday morning in Hollywood, Florida. No information was given on the cause of death.

It’s a huge, huge loss. Bob Moses was one of the bravest Americans this nation produced, a man who helped shape Freedom Summer and efforts to democratize that country. Losing these icons of democracy while our democracy is under attack should move us to action. https://t.co/CsB77gDLX4

– Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) July 25, 2021

Moses was born in Harlem, New York, 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.

But 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.

He became a Rhodes Scholar while studying at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York and was heavily influenced by the work of the French philosopher Albert Camus and his ideas of rationality and moral purity for social change.

Moses then took part in a Quaker-sponsored trip to Europe and cemented his belief that change was fundamental before taking a Masters in Philosophy from Harvard University.

Bob Moses is my organizational model. Principal, intellectual, humble, thoughtful, ready to work with anyone who comes, never cursing, but constantly challenging. Fun loving, friendly, thoughtful, affectionate.

– Imani Perry (@imaniperry) July 25, 2021

Moses didn’t spend much time in the deep south until he went on a recruiting trip in 1960 to “see the movement for yourself”. He attended the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta, but 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 Moses protection from the county line so that he could leave.

He later helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which attempted to challenge the all-white Democratic delegation from Mississippi.

But President Lyndon Johnson prevented the rebel Democratic group from voting in the convention and instead left Jim Crown-Southerlands, which drew national attention.

#BobMoses has died. What a brilliant, conscious, compassionate person. Educator. Organizer. Leader. Have a good rest, sir.

Here, Mr. Moses shares about #FreedomSummer. https://t.co/1x4h2BgJuD

– The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center (@TheKingCenter) July 25, 2021

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

Moses worked as a teacher in Tanzania, Africa, returned to Harvard for a PhD in philosophy, and taught mathematics at Cambridge, Massachusetts high school. Later, the press-shy Moses founded the Algebra Project.

Historian Taylor Branch, whose Parting the Waters won the Pulitzer Prize, said Moses’ leadership embodied a paradox.

“Aside from attracting the same kind of worship to young people in the Movement that Martin Luther King did to adults,” Branch said, “Moses had a concept of leadership of its own” because it came from and from “ordinary people.” was carried.

The SNCC Legacy Project extends its condolences to Janet Moses and his children Maisha, Omo, Taba and Malika Moses and his love for the death of Bob Moses who was the husband, father and emotional center of the family. pic.twitter.com/W1boiPW0kP

– SNCC 60. (@ SNCC60.) July 25, 2021