Bob Moses, civil rights icon of the 1960s, dies at 86
Moses is the latest African American leader of that era to die in the past year, including John Lewis, Vernon Jordan, C.T. Vivian, Charles Evers and Gloria Richardson.
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Daniel Trotta / Reuters | 4:43 pm, Jul. 25, 2021
July 25 (Reuters) - Bob Moses, a civil rights leader who took part in some of the most significant campaigns for equality in the Deep South in the 1960s and later became an advocate for African Americans to succeed in math, died on Sunday at age 86, the NAACP said.
Moses is the latest African American leader of that era to die in the past year, including John Lewis, Vernon Jordan, C.T. Vivian, Charles Evers, and Gloria Richardson.
Ben Moynihan, the director of operations for the Algebra Project, said he had talked with Moses’ wife, Dr. Janet Moses, and she said her husband had passed away Sunday morning in Hollywood, Florida. Information was not given as to the cause of death.
“Bob Moses was a giant, a strategist at the core of the civil rights movement. Through his life’s work, he bent the arc of the moral universe towards justice, making our world a better place, said the head of the NAACP, Derrick Johnson.
Moses was born in Harlem, New York, on January 23, 1935, two months after a race riot left three dead and injured 60 in the neighborhood. His grandfather, William Henry Moses, has been a prominent Southern Baptist preacher and a supporter of Marcus Garvey, a Black nationalist leader at the turn of the century.
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Born in New York City s Harlem in 1935, Moses was an educator in the city before moving to Mississippi in the early 60s, becoming field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC.
Moses became a principal organizer of the Freedom Summer project in 1964 when hundred of northern college students joined with local Black Mississippians to register African American voters and promote civil rights throughout the state. Staff are saddened to hear of the death of Bob Moses, an American icon who left a tremendous legacy in Mississippi,” Mississippi Department of Archives and History Director Katie Blount said.
1960s civil rights activist Robert Moses has died
REBECCA SANTANA, Associated Press
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1of9FILE - In this Feb. 5, 2014 file photo shows Robert Bob Moses, a director of the Mississippi Summer Project and organizer for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) answers questions about Freedom Summer in 1964 during a national youth summit hosted by the Smithsonian s National Museum of American History, at the Old Capitol Museum in Jackson, Miss. Moses, a civil rights activist who endured beatings and jail while leading Black voter registration drives in the American South during the 1960s and later helped improve minority education in math, died Sunday, July 25, 2021, in Hollywood, Fla. He was 86.Rogelio V. Solis/APShow MoreShow Less
2021/07/26 10:52 FILE - In this Feb. 5, 2014 file photo shows Robert Bob Moses, a director of the Mississippi Summer Project and organizer for the Student Non-Violen. FILE - In this Feb. 5, 2014 file photo shows Robert Bob Moses, a director of the Mississippi Summer Project and organizer for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) answers questions about Freedom Summer in 1964 during a national youth summit hosted by the Smithsonian s National Museum of American History, at the Old Capitol Museum in Jackson, Miss. Moses, a civil rights activist who endured beatings and jail while leading Black voter registration drives in the American South during the 1960s and later helped improve minority education in math, died Sunday, July 25, 2021, in Hollywood, Fla. He was 86. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)