Bob Moses

   

        

Inspired by the February, 1960 North Carolina Woolworth sit-ins Bob Moses, a young New York City high school math teacher, volunteered with In Friendship. This group, founded by Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin and Stanley Levison, was providing support for the sit-ins and demonstrations in the southern states. Influenced by peace seeking Quaker ideas and the philosophical ideas of Camus, Moses was skeptical of organized political actions and hierarchical structures (Carson). Bayard Rustin, with similar Quaker ideals, suggested Moses go to Atlanta to work with Baker at the SCLC. Armed with a letter of introduction, Moses arrived in Atlanta in the summer of 1960. At the time, the newly formed SNCC organization was operating from a corner of the SCLC office on Auburn Avenue, in the heart of Negro life in Atlanta. Ella Baker was fresh from the Easter weekend student gathering at Rusk College where SNCC was formed.

Baker’s influence on Bob Moses was immediate when she took the time to get to know him asking “Who are your people?” (Ransby 250) Learning about his background they found a personal connection. As a child Moses had taken delivery of the cases of milk from the milk cooperative and sold individual bottles to the residents of his apartment building. He made a penny on each bottle sold, and if he sold enough bottles, he had money for milk for his family (Moses 32). Baker had been the one to set up the milk cooperative. The important part of this story is not the milk, but the connection. Baker taught Moses the importance of connecting with the people around you, the importance of understanding your fellow workers (Moses 32).


Baker was also on the way out of the SCLC organization, from her point of view and that of SCLC. She chafed against the hierarchical structure and the promotion of strong leaders. She thought the people themselves could make more and better progress if the issues were their issues and the methods their methods. This was counter to the leadership of the SCLC, strong religious leaders in a top down organization (Carson).

Moses was forming his own concept of leadership, that it should be community based. Baker solidified it for him with her vision that it come from the grassroots, that the leader is a catalyst to draw the people together but not to build dependence. The leader should work himself or herself out of a job. Moses became her “political apprentice”. According to Ransby both were thoughtful intellectuals considering a larger picture and understood that the quest for social justice is a process (251).

Baker was concerned that the students at the SNCC conferences were from the states staging sit-ins, but not Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana. Moses agreed to a road trip to these states to elicit participation in the planned Oct. 1960 conference. Not having been to any of these states before he did not know what to expect. As he said, he “didn’t know enough to be afraid” (Moses 38). With Baker’s list of telephone numbers in his pocket he boarded the bus to Mississippi. He started contacting people and learned how to enter their lives (Moses 38). The work Moses did in the summer of 1960 laid the foundation for SNCC’s work leading up to 1964’s Freedom Summer.

Amzie Moore seemed to be waiting for Moses. Welcoming Moses as a friend of Baker’s, Moore also saw the potential of student activism and did not hesitate to express his opinion about the kind of work they should do. To Moore, in Mississippi it was not about sit-ins and lunch counters. The small towns did not have lunch counters, and anyway, people didn’t have money for food at Woolworth’s. Moses quickly learned from Moore that the Mississippi delta was primarily black who had no access to the polls. To Amzie Moore the issue was voter registration. With black people registered to vote, they would be able to make change. Although Moses saw the importance of voter registration, he had a teaching contract for the next school year and vowed to return in the spring. Although Moses could not attend the October 1960 workshop, Amzie Moore does, where he joins the discussion of the SNCC mission, voter registration or direct action (Moses 37-42).

Amzie Moore's house in Cleveland, MS

            The next year, 1961, the divided opinions of the SNCC mission come to a head at an August meeting at Highlander. By this time Bob Moses has returned from New York and is SNCC Field Secretary in Mississippi. He was convinced that SNCC needed to empower southern blacks via access to the polls. Others, including Nashville activists, thought SNCC should continue with direct actions, such as the Freedom Rides that had begun earlier in 1961. Ella Baker kept SNCC from splitting into two factions by proposing that the students take on both projects.  Those who wanted to participate in direct action should do so and those that wanted to work on voter registration should also do so. Bob Moses supported Amzie Moore and the others from Mississippi. The grassroots knew voter registration was the relevant issue to them. Ella Baker supported the students on both sides. Moses did not want to dictate the way SNCC would be involved in Mississippi and Baker, even though she had tremendous influence with the SNCC members, wanted them to take the lead (Moses 37-42).

            Moses returned as promised to Mississippi in 1961 and went to McComb in south of Jackson. Amzie Moore wanted Moses to work in the delta but they finally decided they were not ready. In McComb, Moses works with C. C. Bryant who was head of the Pike County NAACP. Setting up classes in voter registration they take on the very difficult job of actually getting a black person registered. The county registrars make it virtually impossible, requiring interpretation of the Mississippi constitution and obligations of a citizens. The registrars, could summarily reject the application, plus they could actually just shut down the office. Moses was violently attacked and severely beaten. Then Herbert Lee was killed by a Mississippi politician who was absolved later that same day. The violence effectively shut the voter registration down (Carson).

            While failing in voter registration, the McComb experience set the stage for the next voter campaign. The core of the staff that takes the voting campaign to the Mississippi delta are veterans from McComb. A full time staff of field organizers will have some success in the delta. Moses, as the first full time SNCC field secretary, organizes the registration drive in the delta in the manner of Ella Baker. As naturally soft-spoken, articulate man, he looked at himself as a catalyst, rather than a leader (Carson). In this manner, he would take a seat at the back of the room at a meeting and participate by asking leading questions, not guiding the gathering (Moses).

            By the early months of 1964 as the planning for the Mississippi Project proceeded, Moses was the co-director of the Council of Federated Organizations voter registration project. COFO brought together people from the NAACP, CORE, SLCL and the NAACP. It was a channel for money coming in to support voter registration (Carson).

Bob Moses in the COFO Center in Jackson, MS

            Freedom Summer culminated in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party attempt to be recognized at the Democratic National Convention. According to Clayborn Carson this was the crucial event of the southern struggle. Basically, they had to be recognized as a political force (Carson).

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at Democratic National Convention

            At about this point he disassociated himself from the Mississippi project and SNCC, taking himself out of the movement. Following one of Ella Baker’s precepts, that a leader should not build dependence, he truly wanted to work himself out of a job. After a time in Alabama where he is associated with the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, to be known as the Black Panthers, the first independent political party, he receives a draft notice. Heading to Canada for a while he then moves to Tanzania where he stays until he can come back to the U. S. under amnesty (Carson).

Carson, Clayborne. “Bob Moses: Mississippi Organizer.” African-American History: The Modern Freedom Struggle. Stanford Univ. History Dept. 23 Oct. 2007. iTunesU.


Moses, Robert P, and Charles E. Cobb. Radical Equations: Math Literacy and Civil Rights. Boston: Beacon Press, 2001. Print.


Ransby, Barbara. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Print.