Speaking on Monday’s Boston Public Radio, Rev. Irene Monroe called the late civil rights champion Bob Moses both “a quiet giant” and “a quiet genius.”
Moses died Sunday at age 86, at his home in Hollywood, Fla.
During the peak of the Civil Rights Movement in the early 1960s, Moses risked his freedom and personal safety to lead an effort getting Black Mississippi residents registered to vote. Then, in Cambridge during the 80s, he went on to found the still-operational nonprofit The Algebra Project, which seeks to empower Black youth with skills in math. “Math literacy,” he called it in a 1989 interview with The Boston Globe.
As usual, Monroe was joined in the conversation by her All Rev’d Up co-host, the Rev. Emmett G. Price III. Price called Moses a “statuesque figure” who managed to emanate brilliance without the need to speak above his peers.
“Here’s a person who, in many ways, was an average guy,” Price said, “who made a conscious decision to participate in the movement in whatever way he could, to bring whatever he brought.”
“And, in many ways, he has been kind of seen as a differing leader to Martin Luther King, Jr.,” he added.
Since Moses’ death, much of the media coverage has noted that he wasn’t as publicly recognizable as some of his contemporaries, like Rosa Parks, John Lewis or Martin Luther King, Jr. To that end, Monroe said Moses “again shows us the multiplicity around Black leadership during the Civil Rights Movement.”
“Sometimes one of the flaws about the Civil Rights Movement is that we just looked at the Black charismatic male leaders,” she said. “We didn’t look at the folks that really were the foot soldiers — many of them the Black women.”
“When we focus just narrowly on those charismatic figures, we miss a Bayard Rustin, as well as a Bob Moses,” she said.
Rev. Irene Monroe is a syndicated religion columnist, the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail and a visiting researcher in the Religion and Conflict Transformation Program at Boston University School of Theology. Rev. Emmett G. Price III is the founding pastor of Community of Love Christian Fellowship in Allston. Together, they host GBH’s All Rev’d Up podcast.
