Civil Rights Activist and Creator of Algebra Project to Speak at Grinnell College

Civil Rights Activist and Creator of Algebra Project to Speak at Grinnell College

GRINNELL, Iowa -- Noted civil rights activist and architect of the highly successful Algebra project, Bob Moses, will be the guest speaker at the 2001 Grinnell College commencement ceremonies Monday, May 21 at 11 a.m. In case of inclement weather, the ceremony will be held in the college's Darby Gymnasium on Eighth Avenue.

Moses, who participated in what has become known as the 1964 Freedom Summer, which brought hundreds of college students to rural Mississippi to help register black voters, will receive Grinnell College's honorary doctorate degree in Humane Letters.

Described by Pulitzer-prize winning author Tony Branch as "the equivalent of Martin Luther King," Moses helped transform the 1960s civil rights movement, traveling and living amongst the rural black community and educating them about their constitutional rights and to register them to vote.

Most recently, though, Moses has developed the widely acclaimed "Algebra Project," a mathematics project begun in 1982 in Cambridge, Mass., with the idea of teaching algebra to students in middle school.

According to Moses, the idea is relatively simple: without algebra, the door to college and most skilled professions is locked. But many black and Hispanic students, if they take algebra at all, learn it too late to get on the college-prep mathematics track.

By its 10th year, the program was reaching more than 9,000 inner-city youths across the county and winning accolades from the national Science Foundation.

In 1992 Moses and Dave Dennis, started the Delta Algebra Project of Mississippi with programs in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Kentucky.

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