Civil rights activist and math literacy advocate,was born in New York City to Gregory Moses,a janitor,and Louise Parris. Bob Moses would later recall that his father's job was a good one during the Depression that Gregory,a hardworking,intelligent man, resented the lack of opportunties for African Americans in the 1930s.Determined that his sons would not face the same frustrations, Gregory pushed them hard academically.Robert,a quiet and bookish child,won admision to the Stuyvesant High School for gifted students,where teachers encouraged his precocious interest in Chinese philosophy. He also captained the school baseball team and was elected senior class president. In 1952 Robert sought and won a scholarship to Hamilton College, a small, highly selective, and conservative school in Clinton, New York.
One of only a handful of African American students at Hamilton,Robert found upstate New York to be sharp contrast to Harlem,he soon immersed himself in a range of college activities. At first he particpated in a fundamentalist Christian study group and considered entering the ministry, he was gradually drawn to the pacifist beliefs of several of his professors. They encouraged Robert to attend Quaker workshops and summer camps in Europe,where he helped to build low-income housing for the homeless,picked potatoes,and came to share his fellow volunteers' commitment to social justice.Following graduaation in 1956,Robert traveled to Japan to explore his interest in Zen Buddhism. He had also become fascinated by the existential philosophy of Albert Camus,who argued that people should be driven by their individual consciences in confronting evil.
When Robert entered Harvard University's philosophy department in 1957,he focused not on Camus but on analytical philosophy,for which his interest in mathematics and questions of logic served him well.Soon after after completing his MA,he returned to New York City in 1958 to be near his daddy,had suffered a nervous breakdown following his wife's death from cancer.Robert found a job teaching math at the city's elite Horace Mann High School and became involved in civil rights activism with the veteran New York pacifist Bayard Rustin.
Inspired by the wave of student sit-ins in early 1960,he traveled to Atlanta Georgia,on Bayard recommendation,to meet with Ella Baker. Ella,a veteran NAACP organizer,in the South, was at that time executive secretary of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), founded by Martin Luther King Jr. In 1957.She was instrumental in promoting a new, youth-led organization,the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC),that shared SCLC's goals of ending segregation through nonviolent protests,which she hoped would be less reliant on charismatic leaders like Martin.Her philosophy of civil rights organizing appealed to Robert,since it was all intents and purposes a practical expression of Camus's existentialism.Ella and Robert believed that a racists society could be transformed only if those who suffered under it came understand their oppressors.Believing that SNCC had much to learn from local African American leaders,Ella sent Robert to Cleveland,Mississippi,where the NAACP leader Amzie Moore persuaded him to focus his efforts on voter registration,rather than try to replicate a sit-in of the type that had been effective in lunch counter demonstrations in Greensboro,North Carolina.In 1960 a mere 5 percent of African American adults in Mississippi were registered to vote.Only with the power of the ballot,Amzie argued,could African Americans overcome their own fear,and only then could they overcome segregation. Robert recognized that white resistance would be intense,the Harvard philosophy student,known for his soft-spoken, sensitive demeanor,could barely conceal his euphoria about the prospect of battle."Nobody starry-eyed," he wrote a fellow SNCC staffer,"these are nasty jobs we're going to find some nasty people to do them,so put me down' cause I'm not only getting mean I'm getting downright nasty" (quoted in Branch,331).
Robert returned to Mississippi in the summer of 1961 to serve as SNCC's full-time field secretary.He began by opening a voter registration school in McComb, in the southwestern part of the state,to help would-be voters pass Mississippi's notorious literacy tests,which had been designed to keep African Americans off of the register.
One of only a handful of African American students at Hamilton,Robert found upstate New York to be sharp contrast to Harlem,he soon immersed himself in a range of college activities. At first he particpated in a fundamentalist Christian study group and considered entering the ministry, he was gradually drawn to the pacifist beliefs of several of his professors. They encouraged Robert to attend Quaker workshops and summer camps in Europe,where he helped to build low-income housing for the homeless,picked potatoes,and came to share his fellow volunteers' commitment to social justice.Following graduaation in 1956,Robert traveled to Japan to explore his interest in Zen Buddhism. He had also become fascinated by the existential philosophy of Albert Camus,who argued that people should be driven by their individual consciences in confronting evil.
When Robert entered Harvard University's philosophy department in 1957,he focused not on Camus but on analytical philosophy,for which his interest in mathematics and questions of logic served him well.Soon after after completing his MA,he returned to New York City in 1958 to be near his daddy,had suffered a nervous breakdown following his wife's death from cancer.Robert found a job teaching math at the city's elite Horace Mann High School and became involved in civil rights activism with the veteran New York pacifist Bayard Rustin.
Inspired by the wave of student sit-ins in early 1960,he traveled to Atlanta Georgia,on Bayard recommendation,to meet with Ella Baker. Ella,a veteran NAACP organizer,in the South, was at that time executive secretary of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), founded by Martin Luther King Jr. In 1957.She was instrumental in promoting a new, youth-led organization,the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC),that shared SCLC's goals of ending segregation through nonviolent protests,which she hoped would be less reliant on charismatic leaders like Martin.Her philosophy of civil rights organizing appealed to Robert,since it was all intents and purposes a practical expression of Camus's existentialism.Ella and Robert believed that a racists society could be transformed only if those who suffered under it came understand their oppressors.Believing that SNCC had much to learn from local African American leaders,Ella sent Robert to Cleveland,Mississippi,where the NAACP leader Amzie Moore persuaded him to focus his efforts on voter registration,rather than try to replicate a sit-in of the type that had been effective in lunch counter demonstrations in Greensboro,North Carolina.In 1960 a mere 5 percent of African American adults in Mississippi were registered to vote.Only with the power of the ballot,Amzie argued,could African Americans overcome their own fear,and only then could they overcome segregation. Robert recognized that white resistance would be intense,the Harvard philosophy student,known for his soft-spoken, sensitive demeanor,could barely conceal his euphoria about the prospect of battle."Nobody starry-eyed," he wrote a fellow SNCC staffer,"these are nasty jobs we're going to find some nasty people to do them,so put me down' cause I'm not only getting mean I'm getting downright nasty" (quoted in Branch,331).
Robert returned to Mississippi in the summer of 1961 to serve as SNCC's full-time field secretary.He began by opening a voter registration school in McComb, in the southwestern part of the state,to help would-be voters pass Mississippi's notorious literacy tests,which had been designed to keep African Americans off of the register.
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