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Funding provided by:
Civil Rights Movement Series

Black Votes Matter

In partnership with:
With support from: Lowell Institute
Date and time
Thursday, April 02, 2015

Museum of African American History, National Voting Rights Museum and New Democracy Coalition present **Black Votes Matter: The Mississippi Theater of the Civil Rights Movement and Voting Rights Act.** Bob Moses’ vision of grass roots organizing led him to become a leader in the civil rights movement and Mississippi Freedom Summer Project. He initiated and organized voter registration drives, sit-ins, and Freedom Schools for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said that he appreciated Moses' fresh ideas, calling his "contribution to the freedom struggle in America" an "inspiration." Nearly 40 years later, the renowned activist began organizing again, this time as teacher and founder of the national math literacy program called the Algebra Project. His work was recognized with a MacArthur "Genius" Grant, which he used to found the Algebra Project. He argues that the crisis in math literacy in poor communities is as urgent as the crisis of political access in Mississippi in 1961. Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act (Photo: President Lyndon B. Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks at the signing of the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965, via [Wikimedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965 ""))

BobMoses_sm_001.jpg
Moses is an American educator and civil rights activist, known for his work as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee on voter education and registration in Mississippi during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Since 1982 Moses has developed the nationwide Algebra Project in the United States. He has received a MacArthur Fellowship and other awards for this work, which emphasizes teaching algebra skills to minority students based on broad-based community organizing and collaboration with parents, teachers and students. Moses earned a B.A. from Hamilton College and an M.A. in philosophy at Harvard, and received numerous prestigious awards and recognitions.
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