And Gently He Shall Lead Them: Robert Parris Moses and Civil Rights in Mississippi

1. "A Lot of Leaders"

ONE "A LOT OF LEADERS" Robert Parris Moses was born on January 23, 1935, and raised in Harlem, New York City. His grandfather , William Henry Moses, was a charismatic Baptist preacher who traveled throughout the South raising funds for the National Baptist Convention. William Moses was educated at Virginia Seminary in Lynchburg, where he met and married Julia Trent. He held pastorates in Knoxville, Tennessee; Newberry, South Carolina ; Staunton, Virginia; Washington, D.C.; and Philadelphia .I He was also the author of several homiletic reviews for ministers and served a term as president of a four-year school to train black Baptist ministers in Guadalupe, Texas.2 Robert's father, Gregory, frustrated by the struggle to survive during the depression, inculcated in the young 9 10 t t A LOT OF LEADERS" Moses and his two brothers, Roger and Gregory, a drive to succeed where he had failed. They lived in the fourstory Harlem River Projects, a small, contained complex with written exams to get in and a long waiting list.3 Moses' father-unlike his brother, a college professor -was a janitor at the 369th armory in Harlem, an occupation Bob Moses has described as Ita good job" (for the Depression) that Itdidn't go anywhere.... That ate away at him, and I think he himself never expressed that in terms of frustration at society as a whole. It was frustration that led to drinking that led to difficult times in the family. There was a lot of that middle-class frustration-a whole generation of people who were intelligent, rooted in family, and industrious, for whom there was just no opportunity. You'd always hear, 'It's gonna be different when you grow up.' So you had a slow buildup of frustration." 4 But perhaps both his father's and his own frustration impelled Moses to apply himself more rigorously to make things different when he grew up. Moses entered Stuyvesant High School, a school for gifted New York City students who were admitted on the basis of competitive citywide examinations. Stuyvesant was liberal in politics and culture. Moses frequently attended hootenannies , folk-singers' performances of a bohemian cast, mild precursors of the experimental and insurgent music of the 1960s. These, he has said, Ithelped orient me." 5 In his senior year at high school he was elected class president; he was also captain of the school baseball team. Moses graduated from Stuyvesant in June 1952, in the middle of his class academically.6 His parents pushed him in the direction of the good small liberal arts colleges and away from the tradi- t t A LOT OF LEADERS" 11 tional black schools, which they believed too usocial."7 His father in particular thought that he would get a better education and be forced to prove his mettle at a white college.8 Both parents were delighted when he won a scholarship to Hamilton College in upstate New York in the fall of 1952.9 At Hamilton, Moses was one of a few black students among upper-middle-class whites. It was not atypical for his classmates to respond that he was the first black person they had ever met when asked about Moses. One classmate speaks of the substantial difference between Moses and his peers ubecause so many of us had never really related to blacks in any significant way before. He lived in some isolation.... Yet he was deeply, widely universally respected." 10 A member of the honor court, co-captain of the basketball team where he exhibited Ilcool composure," the elected vice president of his senior class, and a Rhodes Scholarship candidate , he gained a reputation for being quiet and unaffected . As part of his scholarship arrangement, he worked as a waiter in the nonfraternity dining hall.tt Moses also served for two years as head of the student advisors to freshmen. Perhaps the most influential student group to which Moses belonged was the Emerson Literary Society (ELS), a residential social organization that exhibited an uncommon social consciousness. As one classmate remarked, IIBy today's standards we were a largely racist, sexist, anti-semitic collection of white males. Fraternities completely dominated our sociallife and the Greeks didn't offer membership to minority or Jewish students. It was Korea, Eisenhower, and 25 cents a bottle Utica Club beer." 12 ELS was not the usual campus fraternal group: its members' average 12 II A LOT...