The Nation recently published an article written by Tom Hayden about Hamilton alumnus Bob Moses. Moses graduated from Hamilton in 1956 and went on to attend Harvard. An organizer of the Freedom Riders, Moses was deeply involved in the Civil Rights movement, as well as eliminating segregation in the U.S., unfair voting laws, and racial violence.
After graduating for Harvard, Moses went on to visit Japanese Zen centers, teach at the Horace Mann school in New York. It was at this time that Moses participated in sit-ins and began to work for the Freedom Rides; soon after, he volunteered at Martin Luther King, Jr.'s office in New York City, according to Hayden. He moved to Atlanta to join a small citil rights office; it was in Georgia that Moses acquired some of the radical policial ideas, such as "fashioning a liberal Democratic Party by breaking the connection with the party's racist Dixiecrat wing," also known as the Freedom Democrats.
According to Hayden, "Bob was the catlyst and the example. He helped the country to look in the mirror and confront itself... Some say Bob was more a mystic than an organizer. If so, he was the most practical organizer I ever met... Only a prophetic organizer can do such work."
