Math, Civil Rights, and the Legacy of Bob Moses

Gabrielle Birchak/ February 25, 2025/ Late Modern History, Modern History

It’s Black His­to­ry Month, and we are still cel­e­brat­ing black excel­lence. This week, I am talk­ing about one of my favorite activists and math­e­mati­cians, Robert Par­riss Moses, also known as Bob Moses. His life and lega­cy made an indeli­ble mark on America’s civ­il rights move­ment and math edu­ca­tion. Hi, I’m Gabrielle Bir­chak. I have a back­ground in math, sci­ence, and jour­nal­ism. By the time you’re done lis­ten­ing to this, you will know a lot more about Bob Moses, an incred­i­ble indi­vid­ual who changed many lives.

I’m very excit­ed about this pod­cast because it’s about a per­son I’ve want­ed to talk about for a long time. Robert Moses, also known as Bob Moses, real­ized that math lit­er­a­cy is an exten­sion of the civ­il rights move­ment. Math is more than about under­stand­ing num­bers, sci­ence, and data. It is a tool for help­ing kids learn a skill that empow­ers them not only in school and col­lege but also in life.

I’ve always been inspired by this Moses’s sto­ry, and before I start, I want to give some con­text to this pod­cast. I grew up in Den­ver, Col­orado, where I attend­ed South High School. I was lucky to go there because it was out of my dis­trict. And what made the expe­ri­ence mem­o­rable was attend­ing a school with great diver­si­ty. Our prin­ci­pal was Mr. Harold Scott, South’s first Black high school prin­ci­pal. He often held school assem­blies that taught us more about Black America’s rich his­to­ry, includ­ing infor­ma­tion about the civ­il rights move­ment in the 1960s. I con­sid­er myself tru­ly for­tu­nate that I received this edu­ca­tion. So, after our assem­blies, I would go to the library and find a cou­ple of books that taught me more about the civ­il rights movement.

I was fif­teen years old when I learned about Free­dom Sum­mer. It was also known as Mis­sis­sip­pi Free­dom Sum­mer or the Free­dom Sum­mer Project. It was orga­nized and launched by the Coun­cil of Fed­er­at­ed Orga­ni­za­tions (CFO), an alliance of four pri­ma­ry civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tions. This includ­ed the Stu­dent Non­vi­o­lent Coor­di­nat­ing Com­mit­tee (SNCC), the Con­gress of Racial Equal­i­ty (CORE), the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Col­ored Peo­ple (NAACP), and the South­ern Chris­t­ian Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence (SCLC). Bob Moses was the field sec­re­tary of the SNCC, the co-direc­tor of the CFO and direct­ed the Free­dom Sum­mer Project. And I will go more into this lat­er, but for con­text, this is how I learned about Bob Moses. I was inspired by his sto­ry, his tenac­i­ty, and his abil­i­ty to orga­nize and mobilize.

EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION

Bob Moses was born on Jan­u­ary 23, 1935, in Harlem, New York. His father, Gre­go­ry H. Moses, was a jan­i­tor, and his mom, Louise Par­ris Moses, stayed home to raise the kids in the Harlem Riv­er hous­es, which was a pub­lic hous­ing com­plex. In the projects, they had a small, one-room library that would open once a week where his mom would go and gath­er a cou­ple of books for him.^[1] So, he was raised in a fam­i­ly that loved him and encour­aged edu­ca­tion. He grew up in a world where racial seg­re­ga­tion and inequal­i­ty were deeply embed­ded in Amer­i­can soci­ety. How­ev­er, unlike many civ­il rights lead­ers of his time, Moses did not come from the South. Instead, he was shaped by the urban strug­gle of Black com­mu­ni­ties in New York.

He attend­ed Stuyvesant High School, one of the most pres­ti­gious pub­lic schools in the city. From there, he went to Hamil­ton Col­lege, where he stud­ied phi­los­o­phy and French. In 1957, he earned a master’s degree in phi­los­o­phy from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty. He had start­ed his work on his PhD, but his moth­er had passed away, and his father had to be hos­pi­tal­ized. So, in 1958, he returned to New York to help his par­ents. While in New York, he taught math­e­mat­ics at Horace Mann School in the Bronx and tutored math to pri­vate students.

FREEDOM SUMMER

THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Moses’ jour­ney could have eas­i­ly led him to a qui­et life as an aca­d­e­m­ic, but his­to­ry had oth­er plans. Inspired by the stu­dent sit-ins in the South, Moses decid­ed to join the grow­ing Civ­il Rights Movement.

In 1960, Bob Moses became involved with the SNCC, an orga­ni­za­tion led by young activists com­mit­ted to direct action against seg­re­ga­tion. Unlike some of the more promi­nent lead­ers of the move­ment, Moses was known for his qui­et, strate­gic approach.

In 1961, he went to Mis­sis­sip­pi, one of the most dan­ger­ous places in the South for a Black activist. The state was noto­ri­ous for its vio­lent sup­pres­sion of Black vot­ing rights. Moses helped launch the Mis­sis­sip­pi Vot­er Reg­is­tra­tion Project, which worked to empow­er African Amer­i­cans to exer­cise their right to vote.

His work was about reg­is­ter­ing vot­ers and shift­ing the pow­er dynam­ic. He saw vot­ing as the key to break­ing the cycle of oppres­sion that kept Black com­mu­ni­ties in pover­ty and polit­i­cal invis­i­bil­i­ty. As I not­ed ear­li­er, var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tions and civ­il rights groups led the Mis­sis­sip­pi Vot­er Reg­is­tra­tion Project. It was cre­at­ed to empow­er Black cit­i­zens, as they were kept from vot­ing. At the time, they would require Black and African Amer­i­cans to take lit­er­a­cy tests, tax them at the polls, intim­i­date them, and beat them. Mis­sis­sip­pi was one of the most dan­ger­ous places for civ­il rights activism. White suprema­cist groups, local law enforce­ment, and state offi­cials used threats, arrests, and vio­lence to pre­vent Black vot­er reg­is­tra­tion. In the 1960s, Mis­sis­sip­pi was one of the most dan­ger­ous places for civ­il rights activists. It still is. In 2023, Mis­sis­sip­pi pre­sent­ed a bill in the Sen­ate intro­duc­ing restric­tions on protests around state-owned buildings.

Even though it has been six­ty years since the Civ­il Rights Move­ment, numer­ous states across the coun­try have gov­ern­ments that imple­ment a range of dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices and strive to dis­en­fran­chise Black vot­ers and oth­er mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties. Some mea­sures cur­rent­ly being imple­ment­ed include strict vot­er ID laws, reduc­tion of ear­ly vot­ing peri­ods, lim­i­ta­tions on mail-in vot­ing, and the purg­ing of vot­er rolls.

So back to 1961, when Moses went to Mis­sis­sip­pi, he faced beat­ings, arrests, and con­stant threats to his life. His resilience and for­ti­tude are extra­or­di­nary. While he was in Mis­sis­sip­pi, white seg­re­ga­tion­ists, includ­ing the police, were hor­ri­bly vio­lent towards the entire orga­ni­za­tion, includ­ing Moses.

Once, when he was rid­ing through Green­wood, Mis­sis­sip­pi, Klans­men shot at the car. The dri­ver was hit but mirac­u­lous­ly sur­vived. Nev­er­the­less, Moses brought the car to a stop and held the bleed­ing dri­ver. Anoth­er time, when he was assist­ing two Black farm­ers dur­ing a vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ve, and walk­ing them up the steps of a cour­t­house, Moses was bashed in the head with a knife han­dle by the cousin of the sher­iff. He was bleed­ing exten­sive­ly but kept going up the steps. Only after he helped them reg­is­ter did he reach out for med­ical help. There wasn’t a Black doc­tor in this spe­cif­ic coun­ty, so he had to be dri­ven to anoth­er town, where he received nine stitch­es in his head.[2]

I know this is a pod­cast about math and sci­ence. Still, I feel like this sto­ry is impor­tant because equal­i­ty for mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties is essen­tial. Moses worked so hard in these areas to make sure that Black and African Amer­i­cans received their right to vote. Sad­ly, one of the most trag­ic moments of this peri­od was the mur­der of three civ­il rights work­ers that includ­ed James Chaney, Andrew Good­man, and Michael Schw­ern­er. The Klu Klux Klan bru­tal­ly killed them. This act of ter­ror only rein­forced Moses’s belief that the fight for equal­i­ty need­ed to be waged on mul­ti­ple fronts.

By the mid-1960s, his work con­tributed to the even­tu­al pas­sage of the Vot­ing Rights Act of 1965, which out­lawed dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices like lit­er­a­cy tests and poll tax­es. But after years of activism, Moses with­drew from pub­lic life. He rec­og­nized that oth­ers who fol­lowed his exam­ple were get­ting killed, and this weighed heav­i­ly on him. So, he sought refuge from the trau­ma and inten­si­ty of the movement.

In 1966, Moses received a draft noti­fi­ca­tion. He was thir­ty-one years old. The cut-off age for being draft­ed was twen­ty-six, which meant he was six years old­er than the required age.[3] He was sus­pi­cious of this draft notice and believed that it was the action of gov­ern­ment agents. As a result, he moved to Cana­da, where he stayed for a while, and then moved to Tan­za­nia, Africa, with his wife, where he worked as a math teacher for the Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion.[4] He remained in Tan­za­nia until 1976 and then came back to the U.S. where he even­tu­al­ly land­ed in Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts.[5]

THE TURN TO EDUCATION: THE ALGEBRA PROJECT

In the 1980s, while help­ing his daugh­ter with her math home­work, he real­ized that she was strug­gling with the top­ic. That’s when he had an epiphany: math lit­er­a­cy was just as cru­cial as vot­ing rights had been in the 1960s.

In an inter­view with NPR, he is quot­ed as say­ing, “Edu­ca­tion is still basi­cal­ly Jim Crow as far as the kids who are in the bot­tom eco­nom­ic stra­ta of the coun­try,” Moses says. “No one knows about them, no one cares about them.”[6] And, unfor­tu­nate­ly, he is correct.

In 1982, Moses received a fel­low­ship with the MacArthur Foun­da­tion. This fel­low­ship spurred him to start The Alge­bra Project, a ground­break­ing ini­tia­tive to make math acces­si­ble to stu­dents in under­served com­mu­ni­ties. The project aimed to pro­vide “Qual­i­ty Edu­ca­tion as a Con­sti­tu­tion­al Right” for all stu­dents. He saw math edu­ca­tion as a new civ­il rights issue, which was, if Black and low-income stu­dents were not giv­en the tools to suc­ceed in math, they would be locked out of future eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly in STEM fields. In 2002, the project received finan­cial sup­port from the Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion. Upon receiv­ing this sup­port, the project cre­at­ed a bench­mark for stu­dents who were in the bot­tom quar­tile. This bench­mark was that they grad­u­at­ed high school on time and were pre­pared to do col­lege math required to grad­u­ate.[7]

The approach is unique. In a 1996 arti­cle in Smith­son­ian mag­a­zine, the author Bruce Wat­son writes, “The pro­gram begins with gum­drops and tooth­picks used to make geo­met­ric con­structs. It moves on into sub­way trips, with the stops becom­ing pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive num­bers, then into nar­ra­tives of the same trips and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of var­i­ous points of inter­est. These then are assigned sym­bols. Stu­dents get involved, deal­ing with both abstrac­tions and prac­ti­cal log­ic, at first learn­ing ratios by mix­ing lemon­ade one part sug­ar, three parts lemon juice. It sounds sim­ple-mind­ed, but it works. In schools that use the Alge­bra Project, a far high­er num­ber of stu­dents go on into high school Alge­bra than they ever did before. And they do well.”[8]

Moses devel­oped a unique approach to teach­ing alge­bra, using real-world expe­ri­ences to help stu­dents grasp math­e­mat­i­cal con­cepts. He was able to turn math into action and make it engag­ing and approach­able, which in turn made it acces­si­ble to a mul­ti­tude of stu­dents who ben­e­fit from it.

The Alge­bra Project is still in oper­a­tion today. And it con­tin­ues to have an influence.

The Alge­bra Project Based on three prin­ci­ples that include:

• Site Devel­op­ment: the work that The Alge­bra Project does with schools
• Research: the research they con­duct to imple­ment math literacy
• Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment: the train­ing they pro­vide to teach­ers to help make math approachable

The Alge­bra Project isn’t only about math; it is about empow­er­ment. Moses believed that just as lit­er­a­cy had been nec­es­sary for full cit­i­zen­ship in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, math lit­er­a­cy was essen­tial in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry. With­out it, entire com­mu­ni­ties would be shut out of eco­nom­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal advancements.

The project now includes schools across the coun­try, reach­ing thou­sands of stu­dents. It also inspires ini­tia­tives like The Young People’s Project, where high school and col­lege stu­dents become math tutors and men­tors for younger students.

If you want to learn more about The Alge­bra Project, please vis­it them at algebra.org.

Moses’s vision went beyond tra­di­tion­al edu­ca­tion reform. He argued that the prob­lem wasn’t with the stu­dents; it was with a sys­tem that failed to equip them with the skills they need­ed to suc­ceed. His work chal­lenged schools to rethink how they taught math, mak­ing it more rel­e­vant and engag­ing for stu­dents from all backgrounds.

FINAL YEARS AND REFLECTIONS

Bob Moses con­tin­ued his work with The Alge­bra Project well into the 2000s, advo­cat­ing for edu­ca­tion­al reform and equi­ty in math edu­ca­tion. Even as he aged, he remained deeply engaged in the fight for jus­tice, see­ing the strug­gle for math lit­er­a­cy as an exten­sion of the civ­il rights movement.

On July 25, 2021, Robert Par­ris Moses passed away at the age of 86. His death was a sig­nif­i­cant loss, but his lega­cy lives on in the thou­sands of stu­dents, edu­ca­tors, and activists he inspired.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Robert Par­ris Moses was a man of qui­et deter­mi­na­tion. He was a strate­gist who believed in grass­roots empow­er­ment. Whether fight­ing for vot­ing rights in Mis­sis­sip­pi or math lit­er­a­cy in class­rooms, he nev­er sought the spot­light. Instead, he sim­ply did the work.

His life teach­es us that civ­il rights are not only about pol­i­tics; they are also about access to oppor­tu­ni­ty in all forms. Edu­ca­tion, like vot­ing, is a path­way to pow­er. Moses made it his mis­sion to ensure that the next gen­er­a­tion had a seat at the table. No doubt, Moses showed us that the fight for jus­tice isn’t just in court­rooms or streets; it’s also in classrooms.

Until next time, carpe diem!

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[1] Bob Moses Inter­viewed by Julian Bond: Explo­rations in Black Lead­er­ship Series. Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lebuaHS3-DI.

[2] Lev­en­son, Michael, Clay Risen, and Eduar­do Med­i­na. “Bob Moses, Cru­sad­er for Civ­il Rights and Math Edu­ca­tion, Dies at 86.” The New York Times, July 25, 2021, sec. U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/25/us/bob-moses-dead.html.

[3] Cole, Diane. “The Civ­il Right to Rad­i­cal Math: Robert Moses — US News and World Report,” July 28, 2010. https://web.archive.org/web/20100728234153/http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/061022/30moses.htm.

[4] Jones, Dustin. “Bob Moses, Civ­il Rights Leader And Long­time Edu­ca­tor, Dies At 86.” NPR, July 25, 2021, sec. Obit­u­ar­ies. https://www.npr.org/2021/07/25/1020501110/bob-moses-1960s-sncc-civil-rights-leader-math-educator-dies-at-86.

[5] Lev­en­son, Michael, Clay Risen, and Eduar­do Med­i­na. “Bob Moses, Cru­sad­er for Civ­il Rights and Math Edu­ca­tion, Dies at 86.” The New York Times, July 25, 2021, sec. U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/25/us/bob-moses-dead.html.

[6] Con­nel­ly, Christo­pher. “To ‘60s Civ­il Rights Hero, Math Is Kids’ For­mu­la For Suc­cess.” NPR, August 1, 2013, sec. The Sum­mer of ’63. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/08/02/206813091/to-60s-civil-rights-hero-math-is-kids-formula-for-success.

[7] Wag­n­er Col­lege News­room. “Civ­il Rights, Edu­ca­tion Reform Activist Bob Moses Leads Inspir­ing Con­ver­sa­tion.” Wag­n­er Col­lege News­room, March 14, 2014. https://wagner.edu/newsroom/sncc-organizer-bob-moses-headlines-black-history-month-program/.

[8] Wat­son, Bruce. “A Free­dom Sum­mer Activist Becomes a Math Rev­o­lu­tion­ary.” Smith­son­ian Mag­a­zine, Feb­ru­ary 1, 1996. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a‑freedom-summer-activist-becomes-a-math-revolutionary‑1–39280341/.