Center for the Scholarship of Teaching < Events < 2004 < Sharecropper Education, Federalism, and Civil Rights

Center Events: Speaker Series

Robert P. Moses (Lanier High in Jackson, Mississippi)
Sharecropper Education, Federalism, and Civil Rights
April 26, 2004

Robert P. Moses is a civil rights activist, mathematics educator, and founder of the Algebra Project. The mission of the Algebra Project, a national mathematics literacy effort, is to ensure that youth in under-served rural and inner-city areas, particularly African-American and Latino children, are equipped with the mathematical skills required for full citizenship in a technological society. The Project reaches approximately 10,000 students and 300 teachers per year in 10 states and in 28 local sites, with a particular focus on the Southern U.S.

Moses argues that education in public schooling should be an opportunity structure for all students. Yet, a quality education for all students is still an unfulfilled promise. Sharecropper illiteracy was the subtext for the right to vote in the Mississippi Delta in the 1960’s. Yet, despite winning the right to vote, the grandchildren and great grandchildren of the sharecroppers are still engaged in a life and death struggle with sharecropper illiteracy - present day sharecropper education.

A recipient of numerous awards for his work, Mr. Moses resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts and teaches mathematics at Lanier High in Jackson, Mississippi. His book, Radical Equations, authored with Charles E. Cobb, Jr. will be available for purchase at the lecture.

Additional information can be found at http://www.algebra.org