Bob Moses.Photo: Rogelio V Solis/AP/Shutterstock
Bob Moses, a civil rights icon who was “at the core of the voting rights movement” and who also advocated for mathematics literacy among minority students, has died, according to the NAACP. He was 86.
“Throughout his life, Bob Moses bent the arc of the moral universe towards justice,” Johnson wrote. “He was a strategist at the core of the voting rights movement and beyond. He was a giant. May his light continue to guide us as we face another wave of Jim Crow laws. Rest in Power, Bob.”
Sherrilyn Ifill, the president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, also issueda statement about Moses' death on TwitterSunday.
Bob Moses.Rogelio V Solis/AP/Shutterstock
Born on Jan. 23, 1935, Moses grew up in a housing project in Harlem and went on to attend Hamilton College before earning his master’s in philosophy at Harvard University, according to theMartin Luther King, Jr.Research and Education Institute at Stanford University.
Familial circumstances eventually brought him back to New York, where he became a mathematics teacher at Horace Mann School, the institute reported.
He went on to join a number of other civil rights projects, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Council of Federated Organizations, of which he was named co-director in 1962, according to the institute.
In 1964, Moses founded the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, a voter registration campaign where he “recruited northern college students to join Mississippi Blacks conducting a grassroots voter registration drive,” per the institute.
He also helped create the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party after Black people were excluded from participating in the all-white Democratic Party, and also campaigned against the Vietnam War, connecting his opposition to the civil rights struggle, according to the institute.
Through his work, Moses became “one of the most influential Black leaders of the southern civil rights struggle,” the institute stated.
Former PresidentBarack Obamacalled Moses “a hero of mine” as he paid tribute to the civil rights iconin a statement on Twitter.
“His quiet confidence helped shape the civil rights movement, and he inspired generations of young people looking to make a difference,” Obama wrote. “Michelle and I send our prayers to Janet and the rest of the Moses family.”
According toCNN, Moses had a special connection to Obama, telling the outlet years ago that he was the first president he voted for in three decades because he was “the first person I really felt moved to vote for.”
“His transition to that higher level only inspires us all to love, struggle and live with and for our people as he did, as we continue to work to realize Bob’s vision of ‘raising the floor of mathematics literacy’ for all young people in the United States of America,” the group said, in part.
On Twitter, New York congressman Jamaal Bowmanwrote: “Today, the world lost a giant. Bob Moses charted the path for teacher-activists to follow. He showed us that democracy must start with loving & connecting with the ignored — and that they have the power to lead themselves. I pray that we will continue to follow his example.”
The Martin Luther King Jr. Center alsoadded in its own statement, “What a brilliant, conscious, compassionately active human being. Educator. Organizer. Leader. Rest well, sir.”
source: people.com
