Legendary Civil Rights Activist Robert Moses Passes Away, Put In Work In '60s Photo: In this Feb. 5, 2014 file photo Robert "Bob" Moses, a director of the Mississippi Summer Project and organizer for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) answers questions about Freedom Summer in 1964 during a national youth summit hosted by the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, at the Old Capitol Museum in Jackson, Miss. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)
Civil Rights leader Robert Parris Moses, known for helping to orchestrate the Black voting rights movement of the ’60s in the South and improving math education for Black students, has died at 86.
He passed away Sunday morning, July 25, in Hollywood, Florida, according to his family. No information was given on the cause of his death.
Born in Harlem, New York, on Jan. 23, 1935, he went on to earn a master’s degree in philosophy from Harvard University in 1957.
In the late 1950s, Moses reached out to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and began working in the civil rights movement, joining the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and traveling with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
The young civil rights advocate worked to register Black people to vote in Mississippi’s rural Amite County and he was beaten and arrested. He pressed charges against a white assailant but an all-white jury acquitted the man. A judge provided protection to Moses to the county line so he could leave, AP reported.
In 1963, Moses and two other activists — James Travis and Randolph Blackwell — were driving in Greenwood, Mississippi, when someone opened fire on them. Travis, 20, was hit.
“We all were within inches of being killed,” Moses said in a 1963 press release.
Moses became a prominent leader in the movement. He was the architect of the 1964 voter registration campaign, the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, among several other civil rights projects, CNN reported.
He later helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which sought to challenge the all-white Democratic delegation from Mississippi in 1964. President Lyndon Johnson prevented the group from voting in the convention but allowed the Jim Crow southerners to remain.
Moses rallied against the Vietnam War and took a leave of absence from SNCC to avoid criticism from other members who did not support his anti-war stance, CNN reported. When his conscientious objector status was denied by the U.S. military, Moses moved to Canada to avoid the draft. He later moved to Tanzania in the late 1960s, where he taught mathematics.
In 1976, he returned to the U.S. following the amnesty program for Vietnam War “draft dodgers” created by President Jimmy Carter.
In 1982, he was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow and he used his fellowship to create the Algebra Project, a national program that encourages African American students to attend college by first teaching them mathematical literacy.
“Bob Moses was a hero of mine. His quiet confidence helped shape the civil rights movement, and he inspired generations of young people looking to make a difference,” former President Barack Obama tweeted.
Writer Zellie Imani tweeted, “We have lost one of the most courageous organizers of our time. As a field organizer for SNCC, Bob Moses was the architect of the Mississippi Freedom Project, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the Algebra Project. Rest in Power, Bob Moses”.
Imani is co-founder of the Black Liberation Collective, a Black youth collective dedicated to transforming higher education.
Gloria Kilpatrick @kenteclothe tweeted, “Thank you for your service, dedication to freedom and recognition of algebra as a civil right! Rest in Paradise”
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