Dignity
Bob Moses and the Civil Rights Movement
Thinking strategically to empower people
Cloth – $125
978-0-252-05984-1
Paper – $27.95
978-0-252-08973-2
eBook – $14.95
978-0-252-04924-8
Publication Date
Paperback: 01/26/2027
Cloth: 01/26/2027
Cloth: 01/26/2027
About the Book
Soft-spoken yet magnetic, Bob Moses became revered within the civil rights movement for his humility, courage, and unparalleled organizing talents. Moses’s organizing skills produced results that retained the commitment of embattled local people and sustained Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee staff morale. But this came at the expense of developing local leadership.Challenging entrenched accounts, Alan Draper reveals that Moses could pursue either “Freedom Now” or develop local leaders, but not both. Rich with new details, Dignity follows Bob Moses from his early years through his death in 2021, presenting a clear-eyed view of his personality and achievements. Draper describes how Moses pursued Black voter registration in Mississippi and then in a second career devoted himself to math education. Just as dignity for Blacks in the twentieth century required voting rights, so did Moses believe that dignity for Blacks in the next century required math skills.
About the Author
Alan Draper is an emeritus professor of political science at St. Lawrence University. He is the author of Conflict of Interests: Organized Labor and the Civil Rights Movement in the South, 1954–1968, and coauthor of The Politics of Power: A Critical Introduction to American Government and The Good Society: An Introduction to Comparative Politics.Reviews
“This exceptionally incisive biography of Bob Moses reveals the many dimensions of his motivating leadership and complex life, showing how a quietly modest yet powerful voting rights leader and math educator shifted history’s torque, especially in brutal Mississippi. Alan Draper’s wonderfully realized book identifies the price the struggle exacted and reflects thoughtfully on the braiding of despair and hope.”—Ira Katznelson, author of Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time
“Much has been written about Bob Moses, one of the key individuals involved in the Mississippi civil rights struggle of the early 1960s. Dignity surpasses all previously published work on Moses, in terms of both its research and its narrative and analytical framework.”
—Charles C. Bolton, author of Home Front Battles: World War II Mobilization and Race in the Deep South
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