Bob Moses in 1964.
Robert Parris Moses (1935-2021) was a Black American activist and high school math teacher. In 1964 he was an organizer of Freedom Summer in Mississippi and co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party with Fannie Lou Hamer. In 1982 he founded the Algebra Project to help more Blacks go to university and avoid the school-to-prison pipeline.
He passed away on Sunday July 25th.
Cornel West called him a:
“spiritual genius, intellectual giant and moral titan”
Bob Moses was a big believer in voting and algebra for Black people – because they were gates that Whites kept to keep Blacks out of power and out of universities. Many have told me that both of these things are “useless”. Is that, like, a coincidence?
Moses is from Harlem. He had no idea just how terrible it was in the South:
“I was taught about the denial of the right to vote behind the Iron Curtain in Europe; I never knew that there was denial of the right to vote behind a Cotton Curtain here in the United States.”
So:
From 1961 to 1964 he was the head of SNCC’s voter registration drive in Mississippi, the most racist state in the nation. This was when the head of the Mississippi NAACP, also pushing voter registration, was killed: Medgar Evers. The Klan shot at Moses but missed. He was arrested and jailed many times, even beaten, but kept going.
In 1964 Moses helped to organize Freedom Summer, where hundreds of idealistic university students and other brave souls came to Mississippi to help get as many Blacks as possible to register to vote. Out of that came the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. It helped to open up the Democratic Party itself to people beyond the White middle class. It made someone like President Obama possible.
Moses broke with SNCC over the Vietnam War – he was openly against it. To avoid the draft he fled to Canada and then Africa.
From 1969 to 1976 he taught mathematics in Africa, at a high school in Tanzania. Then he returned to the US.
From 1982 to 1987 the MacArthur Foundation gave him one of their “genius grants”. He used the money to found the Algebra Project. Algebra, taught at about age 15 (if at all), was a gatekeeper subject that kept many students from going onto or succeeding at university at age 18. Thanks to the school-to-prison pipeline, many of those who are Black will wind up in prison. Moses worked to save as many as possible with new ways of teaching algebra.
Moses in 2013:
“Education is still basically Jim Crow as far as the kids who are in the bottom economic strata of the country. No one knows about them, no one cares about them.”
Moses said a quality public education should be a constitutional right. Otherwise states can get away with giving Blacks, and even Whites, a bad education – which is certainly true of mathematics.
Derrick Johnson, head of the NAACP:
“May his light continue to guide us as we face another wave of Jim Crow laws.”
Requiesat in pace.
– Abagond, 2021.
See also:
- ninth grade – wherein I learn algebra and am kept from going down a bad path
- Harlem
- Civil Rights Movement
- SNCC
- Medgar Evers
- Freedom Summer
- Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
- Fannie Lou Hamer
- Jim Crow:
- Vietnam War
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Abagond 
“was a gatekeeper subject” as is calculus ,trig ,english literature and any mandatory subjects that are not directly related to what you want or need to learn.
But atlas I used to hold ,schools ,colleges, degrees and textbooks as worthy institutions, goals and devices that have real instrinistic value.
Unfortunately due their very neglect abuse and scorn ,I have achieved everything they would deny me and more.
skill knowledge expertise
my sister of blood says to me how much god has helped her in life
and I could not tell her how much my athiesm has helped me
for I sought to repair our separation
but atlas they very neglect and abuse for which they participated in ,is what has made me who I am
and has and continues to teach invaluable lessons
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How sad that most of us never heard of Mr. Moses until after he died. I loved algebra, and enjoyed classes with Mr. Bowser. Never understood why my classmates didn’t like maths though. The majority took math classes because they were required. Too many of us don’t think we will ever need algebra in our day to day living. I was intimidated by calculus and never took it. My daughter aced it, even college level. Power to the mathletes!
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RIP to Mr. Moses as he makes his transition to become an ancestor.🕊✊🏿
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