Although he avoided publicity and rarely spoke to large audiences, Robert Parris Moses became one of the most influential black leaders of the southern civil rights struggle, representing a faction of the movement that was critical of the top-down leadership style of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
Born on 23 January 1935 in New York City, Moses spent his early years in a public housing project near the Harlem River. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1952 and won a scholarship to Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. He earned an M.A. degree in philosophy in 1957 from Harvard University and was working towards his doctorate when he was forced to leave because of the death of his mother and the hospitalization of his father. Moses returned to New York and became a mathematics teacher at Horace Mann School.
During the late 1950s, Moses became increasingly active in the nascent black protest movement. In 1958, he helped veteran black activist Bayard Rustin with the Second Youth March for Integrated Schools in Washington, D.C.; and in the summer of 1960, at Rustin's suggestion, Moses went to Atlanta to work with Martin Luther King , Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The following year, Moses left Atlanta to seek participants for the fall conference of a new organization, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
Moses returned to Mississippi in 1961 to become the head of SNCC's voter registration project in McComb and ultimately director for the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a federation of civil rights groups in the state. Moses sought to develop self-reliant organizations and leaders who could continue the struggle after organizers had departed. His fear that others would become dependent on his leadership led Moses and his wife, Donna Richards, to leave Mississippi after Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964. Temporarily changing his name to Bob Parris, Moses participated in several rallies against the Vietnam War; but by the end of 1965, he had ended his relations with white activists. After separating from his wife in 1966, he went to Canada to avoid the military draft; and in June 1968, he and his new wife settled in Tanzania. Avoiding public attention, they quietly returned to the United States with their four children in 1976.
Moses received a MacArthur Foundation award in 1982 to complete his Ph.D. at Harvard and presently directs the Algebra Project, a national program that brings math literacy skills to traditionally underserved children in poor communities.