(Courtesy of the Algebra Project)
How hard would you fight to study algebra in high school?
In the 1950s and 60s, the Civil Rights movement fought to end segregation and structural racism throughout the United States. Activist Bob Moses worked alongside greats like John Lewis and Martin Luther King Jr. to help register Black voters in Mississippi. Moses was also a prominent anti-Vietnam War protestor.
When he was drafted in 1966, Moses fled to Tanzania, where he worked for the Ministry of Education and as a math teacher.
After President Jimmy Carter granted him and other protestors amnesty in the 70s, Moses returned to the US with his family. One day, his daughter came home and told him that her public high school did not offer advanced math, so he started teaching high school math.
Moses was convinced that the next step in civil rights was educational equality: Black and poor students couldn’t achieve social equality if they weren’t learning the same curriculum in school. In 1982, he created “The Algebra Project”: an initiative to teach advanced math in middle and high schools and provide intensive coursework for students struggling in math.
Though Bob Moses died in 2021, the Algebra Project lives on, reaching thousands of students each year.