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Bob Moses, Mississippi Civil Rights Leader and Education Advocate, Dies at 86

Bob Moses started the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, recruiting mostly white northern college students to team up with Black Mississippians to help register voters.

Bob Moses, a civil rights leader and education advocate who was a key figure in helping Black Mississippians register to vote in the 60s, has died at the age of 86 at his Hollywood home on Sunday. The New York Times reported that his death was confirmed by his daughter, Maisha, who didn’t disclose the cause. Moses began his teaching career in the Bronx, New York, but was inspired by the protests of Black people in the South, moving to Mississippi and becoming a civil rights organizer among its poor and illiterate residents.

Moses helped start the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, recruiting mostly white northern college students to team up with Black Mississippians in grassroots voter registration campaigns throughout the state. He worked with other civil rights leaders such as Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker. In the summer of 2020 after the murder of George Floyd, Moses said he believed the country was undergoing an “awakening.” He told the New York Times that he was uncertain of how the America would progress. “It can lurch backward as quickly as it can lurch forward.”