Robert Parris Moses Congressional Gold Medal Act

(1) Robert Parris Moses was born in Harlem, New York City, on January 23, 1935.

(2) Robert Parris Moses is regarded as an influential civil rights activist, peace activist, public education advocate, and math literacy educator.

(3) Moses grew up in Harlem River Houses and was one of only a handful of Black students at the time who was admitted to Stuyvesant High School.

(4) Moses earned a scholarship to Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, and subsequently obtained a master’s degree in philosophy from Harvard University in 1957.

(5) His doctorate studies in mathematics were halted due to the death of his mother and the hospitalization of his father.

(6) In 1959, Moses helped with the second Youth March for Integrated Schools in Washington, DC.

(7) Moses visited Mississippi in the summer of 1960, and met with local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) leaders who indicated the need to focus on voter registration. He returned to Mississippi after teaching the 1960–1961 school year in New York, where he organized and registered thousands of poor, illiterate, and rural Black residents to vote.

(8) As a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, in 1964, Moses helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project.

(9) Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called Moses’ contribution to the freedom struggle in America an inspiration.

(10) After Moses married Janet, they started a family in Tanzania. He spent nearly a decade there teaching mathematics and working with the Ministry of Education.

(11) Moses returned to the United States in 1976, and continued his doctoral studies in Philosophy of Mathematics at Harvard. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1982, which he used to promote the Algebra Project.

(12) In founding the Algebra Project, Moses stated that K–12 math literacy, like voting literacy, is key to full citizenship for Americans from poor and minority communities as our society shifts from the Industrial Age to the Information Age.

(13) The Algebra Project is a non-profit dedicated to helping students from historically marginalized communities, including Black, Brown, and youth living in poverty, who often hail from low-income households. Students develop math literacy skills, which Bob Moses viewed as the path to permanently improving their life circumstances, as well as the social and economic conditions of their communities.

(14) The Algebra Project uses mathematics literacy as an organizing tool to guarantee quality public-school education for all children in the United States.

(15) The Algebra Project is one of the few mathematics education initiatives to originate in the African-American community.

(16) Since its inception in 1982, the Algebra Project has helped more than 40,000 students in hundreds of schools nationwide.

(17) In 1996, the Young People’s Project was launched by Algebra Project graduates from Cambridge, MA, and Algebra Project middle school students from Jackson, Mississippi. The Young People’s Project recruits and trains high school and college age Math Literacy Workers to facilitate enrichment workshops for younger students in mathematics.

(18) For his work, Bob Moses has been honored, including with an Honorary Doctor of Science from Harvard University and Ohio State University, an Honorary Doctor of Laws from Princeton University, the John Dewey Prize for Progressive Education, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Council of the Teachers of Mathematics, and was inducted to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

(19) Moses wrote about his vision for education and experiences. He was co-author of Radical Equations—Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project (2001), and co-editor of Quality Education as a Constitutional Right—Creating a Grassroots Movement to Transform America’s Schools (2010).

(20) Moses wrote in Radical Equations that the most urgent social issue affecting poor people and people of color, is economic access. In today’s world, economic access and full citizenship depend crucially on math and science literacy. I believe that the absence of math literacy in urban and rural communities throughout this country is an issue as urgent as the lack of registered Black voters in Mississippi was in 1961..

(21) Bob Moses passed away in Hollywood, Florida, on July 25, 2021.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate shall make appropriate arrangements for the posthumous presentation, on behalf of the Congress, of a gold medal of appropriate design in commemoration of Robert Parris Moses, in recognition of his achievements and contributions to American education and civil rights.

For purposes of the presentation referred to in subsection (a), the Secretary of the Treasury (referred to in this Act as the Secretary) shall strike a gold medal with suitable emblems, devices, and inscriptions, to be determined by the Secretary. The design shall bear an image of, and inscription of the name of, Robert Parris Moses.

Following the award of the gold medal under subsection (a), in honor of Moses, the gold medal shall be given to Maisha Moses, Robert Parris Moses’ daughter.

The medals struck under this Act are national medals for purposes of chapter 51 of title 31, United States Code.

For purposes of sections 5134 and 5136 of title 31, United States Code, all medals struck under this Act shall be considered to be numismatic items.

There is authorized to be charged against the United States Mint Public Enterprise Fund such amounts as may be necessary to pay for the costs of the medals struck under this Act.

Amounts received from the sale of duplicate bronze medals authorized under section 4 shall be deposited into the United States Mint Public Enterprise Fund.