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At a time when voting rights are under assault, it is important to remember the legacy of Bob Moses, a brilliant community organizer who died on Saturday at age 86. Moses was a key architect of the civil rights movement’s campaign to enlist Southern Black workers and sharecroppers to register to vote, a campaign that eventually pressured Congress to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a momentous victory which in the decades since the Republican Party has steadily sought to erode.
I have the good fortune to live (part of the year) next-door to the MLK biographer who authored TO THE MOUNTAINTOP. He knew Moses well and was quite distressed to hear of his passing.
I was sad to hear of Bob Moses’ passing this weekend. We studied him in CIVICS (when they used to teach that) in High School because our teacher had worked with the Freedom Riders. Later I went into computers and we hired many people from the Algebra Project to learn programming because of their math skills. He was truly one of the greats.
I saw David Dellinger do the same thing in 1997 with a group of students.
They, of course, were all in awe of him and were asking him questions about how he thought current political situations should be dealt with.
Every time, he would turn the question around and ask them what they thought should be done.
This was a lovely and thoughtful obit. I knew the broad strokes of his work, but not many of the fine details. Two phrases struck me as particularly relevant to today:
1.” If Blacks, who represented a majority of adults in many Mississippi counties, had voted in large numbers, they would have controlled the schools, the police, the courts, and the other levers of government. Most whites would have done almost anything — inside and outside the law — to make sure that did not happen”
This neatly sums up what is happening in GQP-controlled states and their “anti fraud” voting changes- they are desperate to hold onto the levers of power.
2.” He was an organizer of organizers who organized people to free themselves of organizers.” I think Stacy Abrams could be described this way as well. That gives me hope
A great man who was engaged in working to solve a major issue that still remains. It is our collective responsibility to take the time and make the effort to see it through to the successful end, when all US citizens can vote for the individual if their choice.
On the other hand, we still have the rantings of what is a crazy man:
If you replace “routers” with “strawberries”, does this not remind you another famous rant by Lieutenant Commander Queeg?
“White Mississippians retaliated with vicious violence. In June 1964 three SNCC volunteers were murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi ,just as hundreds of new recruits were being trained at a college in Ohio. On the last night of training, Moses spoke to the volunteers and urged anyone who might be uncertain to go home. Only a handful did.”
… … …
The college mentioned was Miami University at Oxford, Ohio. I was 15 at the time and I remember watching the training.
trump claimed all democrats always cheat in elections.
Projection?
This man is mentally ill and needs therapy Preferably in a padded cell. From one of those fancy straight jackets.
Great to know about your OH connection. W/r/t Trump, he will take advantage of the time being used on him in the Legal/Justice system to behave as though no charges ever existed/do exist/will exist against him.
He so badly needs a very public smack down with a large dose of comeuppance in the form of an inescapable indictment that will land his traitorous ass in a deep dark solitary hole. That or demise by “natural causes”.
I’m sorry to say I wasn’t familiar with this man’s name but he was obviously an extraordinary and gifted person. Some people aren’t just intellectually superior, they have energy, persistence, and resilience far beyond the normal as well. Even if you know you fall short of that, maybe far short, it can still inspire you to dig a little deeper. RIP sir after a life well lived.
Before Trump, it was inconceivable that a man who lost a Presidential election would travel-for eight months–around the country claiming that his loss was the result of cheating, after dozens of court decisions otherwise.
The fact that this is still going on is the real Trump “victory”. Trump has destroyed a very important more of American Politics.
We may not be able to unring this bell, but we had better have a helluva facsimile.
