“Dr. King would be talking about the need for quality education for all the nation's youth,” Bob Moses ’56 told Parade Magazine in its Aug. 21, issue.
Moses, who earned his degree from Hamilton in philosophy, was one of three civil rights experts asked by Parade to reflect on the issues the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would address in 2013, 50 years after the March on Washington.
“He would argue that while we managed to eject Jim Crow from public accommodations, we did not remove it from public schools,” Moses continued. “He would argue that education is also a constitutional right, and that allowing Jim Crow public schooling -- meaning that poor kids don't have the same access or resources as privileged kids -- is effectively condemning those children to similar lives of hopeless poverty, especially in the information age.”
A leader of the Civil Rights Movement, Moses was a director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee from 1961 to 1965. He is founder and president of the Algebra Project. Hamilton conferred an honorary degree on Moses in 1991.
