Famous American civil rights activist Robert Moses dies at the age of 86
Robert Parris Moses was a civil rights activist who endured beatings and imprisonment while leading a black voter registration campaign in the southern United States in the 1960s. He later helped improve mathematics education for minorities and has now died . He is 86 years old.
During the Civil Rights Movement, Moses worked as the Mississippi Field Director of the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee to eliminate apartheid, and was the core of the “Summer of Freedom” in 1964, where hundreds of students went to the South to register as voters.
Because of the MacArthur Scholarship, he founded the Algebra Project in 1982 and started his “Chapter Two of Civil Rights Work”. The project includes courses developed by Moses to help poor students succeed in math.
Civil rights activist Robert Moses dies at 86
Rebecca Santana
The Associated Press
Robert Parris Moses, a civil rights activist who endured beatings and jail while leading Black voter registration drives in the American South during the 1960s and later helped improve minority education in math, has died. He was 86.
Moses worked to dismantle segregation as the Mississippi field director of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee during the civil rights movement and was central to the 1964 “Freedom Summer” in which hundreds of students went to the South to register voters.
Moses started his “second chapter in civil rights work” by founding in 1982 the Algebra Project thanks to a MacArthur Fellowship. The project included a curriculum Moses developed to help poor students succeed in math.
I never knew that there was (the) denial of the right to vote behind a Cotton Curtain here in the United States.
The young civil rights advocate tried to register Black people to vote in Mississippi s rural Amite County where he was beaten and arrested. When he tried to file charges against a white assailant, an all-white jury acquitted the man and a judge provided protection to Moses to the county line so he could leave.
In 1963, he and two other activists â James Travis and Randolph Blackwell â were driving in Greenwood, Mississippi, when someone opened fire on them and the 20-year-old Travis was hit.
Rogelio V. Solis / AP
Originally published on July 25, 2021 5:12 pm
Robert Parris Moses, a civil rights activist who was shot at and endured beatings and jail while leading Black voter registration drives in the American South during the 1960s and later helped improve minority education in math, has died. He was 86.
Moses, who was widely referred to as Bob, worked to dismantle segregation as the Mississippi field director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the civil rights movement and was central to the 1964 Freedom Summer in which hundreds of students went to the South to register voters.
Moses started his second chapter in civil rights work by founding in 1982 the Algebra Project thanks to a MacArthur Fellowship. The project included a curriculum Moses developed to help struggling students succeed in math.
WHYY
By
Rebecca SantanaJuly 25, 2021
In this Feb. 5, 2014 file photo shows Robert Bob Moses answering questions about Freedom Summer in 1964 in Jackson, Miss. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)
Robert Parris Moses, a civil rights activist who endured beatings and jail while leading Black voter registration drives in the American South during the 1960s and later helped improve minority education in math, has died. He was 86.
Moses worked to dismantle segregation as the Mississippi field director of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee during the civil rights movement and was central to the 1964 “Freedom Summer” in which hundreds of students went to the South to register voters.