Robert Moses

Robert Parris Moses served as the Frank H.T. Rhodes Class of '56 Professor at Cornell University. A Harvard-trained educator, he earned a B.A. from Hamilton College in 1956 and an M.A. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1957. Moses began his professional career teaching mathematics at the Horace Mann School in Manhattan starting in 1958. He became a prominent civil rights leader, serving as field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from 1960, directing the SNCC's Mississippi Project, and co-directing the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) by 1964. As the main organizer of COFO's Freedom Summer project, he focused on voter registration for disenfranchised Black citizens in Mississippi, challenging Jim Crow laws alongside the Freedom Riders and pressing for federal protection.

After leaving SNCC in 1966, Moses lived in Canada before teaching mathematics in Tanzania from 1969 to 1977. Returning to the United States in 1977, he founded the Algebra Project in 1982, an innovative mathematics literacy program initially developed for inner-city youth in Boston and expanded nationwide to inner-city and rural areas. Supported by a MacArthur Foundation fellowship grant that year, the Algebra Project emphasizes curricula and pedagogy rooted in the philosophy of mathematics to develop higher-order thinking and problem-solving skills necessary for university education and economic mainstream participation, framing math literacy as a civil right akin to voting rights. Moses co-authored the book Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project with Charles E. Cobb in 2001. At Cornell, appointed in 2006, he participated in the university-sponsored Community Forum on Education and Society in 2005 and resided in Alice Cook House on West Campus during visits, contributing to discussions on educational equity and access.