Sunday’s death of Bob Moses, who in the early 1960s played a key role in the civil rights movement in Pike and Amite counties, was a reminder of just how difficult one of Mississippi’s worst times really were.
Though it has been six decades since Moses started coming to the state as the Mississippi field director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, some of the bitterness of the 1960s has not healed — on either side of the racial divide.
The success of Moses, the “Freedom Summer” workers who came to Mississippi in 1964, and the Black residents who endured violent resistance to voter registration efforts is best viewed by today’s number of Black voters and the number of Black elected officials throughout the state.
Because of the 1960s, it is no longer an oddity for Black residents to cast a ballot or to run for public office. If there was a failure in the work of Moses and his peers, it’s today’s too-frequent lack of interest in voting among minorities (as well as whites). It’s as if the sacrifices of the 1950s and the 1960s weren’t that important.
Moses, 86, is being hailed in national news stories as a civil rights hero. His work was certainly a challenging assignment.
Moses himself, who was known for his quiet and patient leadership style, may have frowned on the “hero” description. But what is beyond dispute is that he felt called to put his life on the line by coming from New York to Mississippi. It was a courageous decision that put him in danger many times.
His achievements continued long after the 1960s. After working as a teacher in Tanzania and getting a Ph.D. from Harvard, he taught high school math in Cambridge, Mass. He later taught math in Jackson, Miss.
It’s risky to predict that something else Moses did might turn out to be bigger than helping to register Black residents to vote. But in 1982 he founded the Algebra Project, using money from a MacArthur “genius grant” to set up programs to improve mathematics literacy among underserved populations.
An Algebra Project leader said Moses saw the program as an extension of his 1960s civil right work. That is absolutely correct.
People who hated high school math say that it’s useless to most adults. It certainly is true that no one in their 30s and 40s goes around applying trigonometry equations to their job or their life. But mathematics, often without students realizing it, teaches a person how to think and how to solve problems.
Thinking and solving problems are skills that every person needs, no matter what their job or income. In high school math classes, students solve problems with x and y variables. As adults they solve them with everything else.
The 1960s voter registration held out the hope of participation. But a program like the Algebra Project holds out the hope of greater self-confidence and self-improvement. That combination is a grand accomplishment for any man.
