Robert Moses, influential civil rights figure and FIU professor, dead at 86

Influential civil rights activist Robert “Bob” Moses passed away Sunday at age 86, leaving behind a legacy of fighting against oppression that dates back to the 1960s.

A cause of death was not immediately available.

“That Bob Moses was soft-spoken never should be mistaken for a hesitant spirit,” said David Lawrence Jr., a retired Herald publisher and founder of The Children’s Movement of Florida. “In my lifetime I have known no greater voice for justice.”

Born January 31, 1935 and a Harlem, N.Y. native, Moses was a longtime professor at Florida International University and a noted civil rights activist who registered thousands of southern Black voters during the Civil Rights Movement.

He received a B.A. in Philosophy from Hamilton College in 1956, and an M.A. in Philosophy from Harvard University in 1957.

In the 1960s, Moses joined the fight for racial equality working to get people voting and informed.

He was threatened, jailed and beaten in his efforts to go door-to-door to listen and enlist Mississippians in the struggle. He once walked to court, still bleeding, to file assault charges against the cousin of a local sheriff.

“In the most dangerous times of the Civil Rights Movement he never faltered, but always led with purposeful energy and courage.,” Lawrence said.

In 1964, Moses was a chief organizer of Freedom Summer, which brought nearly 1,000 volunteers to Mississippi and turned a spotlight on the state after the Ku Klux Klan murdered three volunteers.

At one point, Moses led the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee on voter education and registration in Mississippi and co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

Taylor Branch, one of the nation’s leading civil rights historians, told NPR in 2013 that despite his lower national profile, Moses’ success in pushing voting registration to the forefront of the civil rights movement made him almost as influential as Martin Luther King.

“He spoke quietly, he didn’t give big sermons like Martin Luther King,” Branch said. “He didn’t seek out dramatic confrontations like the Freedom Riders and the sit-ins, but he did inspire a broad range of grassroots leadership.”

Years later, Moses kept the spirit of fighting for the disenfranchised when he created an award-winning mathematics literacy program for students in poor-performing schools: The Algebra Project.

The nonprofit Algebra Project is a national network of young math literacy tutors who work to increase the number of black students who are mathematically literate. It has served dozens cities and thousands of students, including in South Florida.

“He spent decades working toward the dream of every child having a quality education and a chance to fulfill his or her potential. Bob was an example for me and for so many. I loved him, and always will,” Lawrence said.

The project began as a way to teach his own kids in 1982, when Moses won a MacArthur “genius grant” for his organizational and math reformation work. By 2001, the project had grown a national footprint with an annual budget of $2.5 million.

Moses first came to Miami in 2004 as an invitee of FIU to serve as an eminent scholar at the school’s Center for Urban Education.

Joan Wynne, a former director of community relations at FIU’s College of Education, former visiting associate professor in Urban Education, and a colleague of Moses’, called him a “national treasure.”

“He was really a civil rights icon,” Wynne said. “He was one of the first in Mississippi getting sharecroppers to vote. He was shot at, beaten up, they put him in jail. He was quite a freedom fighter.”

In a 2011 interview with the Miami Herald, Moses said, “We are still mired in the problems of today. You can restructure schools all you want, but if you don´t have the curriculum, the kids aren’t learning.”

The Algebra Project spawned another movement, the Young People´s Project, in which college students tutor high school students, who, in turn, tutor middle school students.

Moses is survived by his wife, Janet Jemmott Moses, children Maisha Moses, Omo Moses, Taba Moses, Malaika Moses and Saba Moses; and seven grandchildren.

There will be no viewing. For more information, contact Emmanual Funeral Home, 14300 West Dixie hwy Miami 33161.

Miami Herald reporter Howard Cohen contributed to this obituary.