December 28, 2024 • 27 mins
Omo Moses, educator, CEO and founder of MathTalk and author of The White Peril. Omo is the son of legendary civil rights organizer Robert P. Moses and the book is a brilliant, unflinching memoir about becoming Black in America that interweaves voices from 3 generations of the Moses family.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome back to What's at Risk. I'm Mike Christian. In
the White Peril. Omo Moses deathly interweaves his own life
story with excerpts from both his great grandfather's sermons and
the writings of his father, the civil rights activist Bob Moses.
(00:27):
The result is a powerful chorus of voices that spans
three generations of an African American family, all shining a
light on the black experience, all calling fiercely for racial justice.
Omo was born in nineteen seventy two in Tanzania, where
his parents had fled to escape targeted harassment by the
(00:48):
United States government. He did not encounter white supremacy until
the family moved back to America when he was four.
Here he learned what it meant to be black, came
of age in a black enclave of Cambridge, Massachusetts, became
a passionate basketball player, lived in the shadow of his
father's civil rights work, but did not feel like a
(01:10):
part of it until his college basketball career came to
an unceremonious end. Unsure what to do next, he took
up his father's offer to go with him to Mississippi
and teach math to the Algebra Project students. Omo didn't
know it yet, but it was among those young people
that he would find his purpose. Our guest today is
(01:36):
Omo Moses, educator, founder and CEO of math Talk, and
the author of the forthcoming White Peril, which is out
in January of twenty twenty five. Omo, how you doing.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
I'm doing great, Mike, Thanks for having.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Me, Thanks a lot for joining us. Maybe a good
place to start it would be for you to tell
our listeners just a little bit about your background.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
So I guess I love to start with. I'm a dad.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
I have two kids, two amazing kids, Johari who's twelve
and Kamara who's ten. And I'm also the son of
Bob and Janet Moses, and so they met in the
nineteen sixties in Mississippi during the Civil rights movement, and
so definitely see myself as a child of the civil
(02:18):
rights movement and just connected to all.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Of those then young people who work.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
To try to transform America for the better. Also, I'm
the CEO of math Talk, which is a public benefit
corporation that is developing a super cool app that transformed
that you know, you know, transforms math in your community and.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
In your environment.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
And we seek to become the POKEMONO of math learning.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Great, thank you. I read in your book this is
you quoting. I wrote this book because I had to.
I began writing it in eleventh grade and Karen Hawthorne's
Intro to Creative Writing class the only class in four
years of high school that managed to get me to
reach inside and share parts of myself. So why did
you have to write it? That's the obvious question, right.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
I think it's one of those things.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
I don't know if you've ever felt like there's something
that you absolutely have to do in life. And I
discovered in Karen Haughton Hawthorne's writing class that I had
a voice, and so it was really amazing to me.
You know, I was usually a quiet kid, didn't talk much.
She had a couple of free writing exercises and as
(03:38):
I began doing it, all these memories just emerged, and
most of them were memories of Africa that had been
buried in my own subconscious and when I began sharing
those with the classmates, it was like folks were really listening.
So it was one I felt like I had something
to say, but then when I said it, you know,
(04:00):
I just felt like people were paying attention, and so
that really sparked this interest in writing and figuring out
ways to share my voice and to tell stories.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
So you said you started in eleventh grade, which is
a while ago. I know you're still pretty young, but
still eleventh grade was a while ago. How did it go?
Was it a straight line of writing a little bit
every year or did it go and fits in spurts?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (04:26):
No, it was fits in spurts. And I had no
idea what I was going to write or what I
should be writing. I just knew at some point I
was going to write a book. And initially I started
writing poetry, and then I would write some short stories.
And when I went to college, I took a bunch
(04:47):
of creative writing classes. That's when I got kind of
turned on to writing screenplays and just writing. And so
initially I thought I was going to write something similar
to The Hobbit. Tolkien was one of my favorite authors,
and my dad introduced me to that book.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
I was like, all right, what's the version of the Hobbit?
Another version of the Hobbit that I can write?
Speaker 3 (05:11):
But you know, as you kind of as you get older,
you get more mature and you get a better sense
of what's important and meaningful.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
So it ended up becoming a memoir.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
And so when I initially set out, you know, I
was like, Oh, I'm just going to write something fictional
and just make some stuff up, and it's going to
be cool. But as I got older and it took
longer for me to get it done, it felt like
there was a real story that was important that just
connected to my experiences growing up or being born in
(05:44):
Tanzania and then moving to America at an early age.
Then also my experiences growing up as a child of
the civil rights movement.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
You referenced your dad, Bob MOS's well known educator and
certainly a well known civil rights activist, particularly his efforts
on voter education and registration in Mississippi during the Civil
Rights movement, sometimes known as the Freedom Summer Project. He
faced a lot of violence and intimidation in Mississippi as
(06:15):
he was going through that project. How did he view
that and share it with you and how has that
sort of impacted your life? I think you already alluded
to the fact that you're a child of the civil
rights movement, but what are your thoughts around that.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
He didn't talk much about the violence that he faced.
I mean, he talked about what he learned was that
if you get knocked down, that you have to get
back up. I think he and a lot of the
young people that were in Mississippi and organizing during the
Civil Rights movement were committed to risk their lives to
(06:51):
confront what they felt needed to be changed in America.
And I don't know where that decision came from or
how they made that decision, but you know, it was
clear that they were willing to put themselves in harm's
way to try to challenge America to live up to
its ideals and principles. And so, like, I've always remembered
(07:14):
this idea that, well, if you get knocked down, you
got to get back up, and I've just you know,
internalized that into whatever I'm trying to do. And so
you got to be willing to take risks, and inevitably
you're going to get knocked down, and you got to
be willing to try to do whatever you can to
get back up and stand up.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
He was a pretty significant guy, maybe a little less
known than John Lewis and certainly Martin Luther King, but
was he a fairly low key person. It seemed like
his wasn't driven by ego as much, but still was
writ in the mix with all the great leaders of
the sixties.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Yeah, I think he saw himself as an organizer. I
mean it was certainly a leader. I think he led
from in many instances from the back of the room
and was deeply invested in creating space for leadership to
emerge and other voices to emerge. And I think he
was always challenged with how he should assert himself and
(08:16):
to help folks move forward versus just create the space
for people to figure it out and for him to
be part of that conversation. And I think, you know,
it's part of what motivated me to write the book,
because he was in organizer, because he was in the background,
(08:37):
you know, I think his voice and his perspective hasn't
really been heard, and when it has been kind of
documented and shared, I think it's really been contextualized within
historic moments and the real work and the real sacrifices
that he and many others made were just in the
(09:00):
kind of mundane every day kind of door knocking, kind
of visiting people where they were having conversations and getting
people to move together. And so part of what the
book does is really provide a first person perspective of
his experience organizing in Mississippi and the threats to his
(09:22):
life that he confronted in doing that.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
He and your mom ultimately moved to Tanzania, as I
understand it, And you were born in Tanzania, and then
were you Do you have a recollection of Tanzania. I
know you moved back to Cambridge and lived in the
Port neighborhood of Cambridge. What was your childhood like there?
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yeah, I remember just growing up close to nature, that
in a vast space and being able, you know, being
surrounded by you know, mountains and dirt, and so I
remember that vividly. I remember being able to kind of
walk and explore alone in ways where I can't imagine,
(10:04):
you know, my two or three year old child walking
down the street by himself, just getting into whatever he
wanted to get into. And so there was just like
a deep sense of freedom that I associate with with
Tanzania and a deep sense of being connected to the earth.
And you know what I remember is leaving that and
(10:28):
losing our connection to that when we came to America.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
And then you grew up in the Port neighborhood and
maybe just tell our listeners a little bit what that
was like growing up in that period of time. And
you still live right there near that the.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Port is it's home man the eighties. Growing up in
the Port in the eighties really felt crazy. I've always
thought of it as like a microcosm to like any
major kind of urban city, But I think the beauty
of Cambridge is at it small and you have so
many things in close proximity to each other. But growing
(11:07):
up in the Port, you also got a sense of
even though you were in the backyard of Harvard and Mit,
there was a sense of like isolation and not really
having access to all the things that you were surrounded by.
But it was really a beautiful time. And so it
was like at during the emergence of hip hop culture
(11:29):
and music. I grew up with me and my brother
and then six sets of other brothers that were all
within a year or two of each other. I think
we got a taste of what it feels like to
just kind of run free and roam the streets and
just get into stuff that boys usually do that's not
(11:49):
gonna to help build character, but isn't going to set
you back and prevent you from doing whatever you want
to do in life. And so yeah, I like that
opportunity and the young people that I came of.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Age with, and you discovered basketball during that period of
time too.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Right, absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Cambridge is a huge basketball city, and so I mean
before Patrick Ewing, there was Jerry Scott and Rudy Williams
and so many others. But Patrick Ewing is probably the
most famous basketball player to come out of Cambridge. And
then after him was Ramel Robinson. And so there was
(12:30):
really this great tradition that galvanized the whole city and
really galvanized the black community in particular, but really the
whole city. Everyone wanted to be a basketball player, and
so it was interesting being able to be around all
of that talent and you know, go out to the playgrounds.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
And then you you ultimately went on to play in
college I think at Pittsburgh and then George Washington, if
I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Yeah, And so I had a pretty good run.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
We won the state championship my senior year in high school,
and I was playing with the same group of guys
I played together within eighth grade. We had won the
city championship, so that was one of the highlights. And
then yeah, I was determined to get a basketball scholarship
and to be able to play at the highest level,
and so that was really an honor to be able
(13:24):
to achieve that. And basketball enabled me to really travel
the world and to visit so many places that I
might not have been able to visit, and to engage
with people that I might not have been able to
engage with. For many of my friends and peers that
I grew up with, like their hoop dreams ended in
(13:44):
six seventh or eighth grade or maybe ninth grade, and
so they were left with trying to figure out who
they could be, who they wanted to be, who they
should be in society, and depending on how they identified
with what was in the community and what was around them,
(14:04):
depending on kind of the education that they received, I
think that had a significant impact on the opportunities that
they had later in life. For me, you know, I
was really lucky to be able to fall back on
the work that my parents had been doing. So when
my hoop dreams ended, I was able to connect with
(14:27):
my dad and connect with the work of the algebra
project as a way to try to figure out as
a young black man like who I should become in America.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
And then you did go on to major in maths
in your higher education career, and that has obviously been
impactful in your life. How how did that fit into that,
you know, sort of following in your dad's footsteps from
a from the math teaching standpoint, How did did that
(15:00):
sort of inform things that you're doing today with math
talk and that type of thing.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Coming out of college, I decided when I didn't know
what to do, I decided to work with my dad's
Algebra Project. And then as I got older, when I
became a father and I was trying to figure out
what am I going to do? I really tapped into
what I learned through my dad's Algebra Project to create
(15:26):
math Talk. And so one of the things that the
Algebra Project focused on was really helping young people learn
through their own common everyday experiences, through their community, through
their own language, and so really providing a context that
was meaningful for learning mathematics. Then that really grows out
(15:47):
of the work of the Algebra Project and thinking about
how to take every day experiences and turn them into
magical math moments. And so I saw the power in
that with my own kids, and have been thinking about
ways in which technology can be used to help other
adults in children's lives, whether their parents or teachers, to
(16:11):
be able to facilitate and spark similar moments for kids anywhere.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
And so that did lead you to start a company,
math Talk, which is now a technology type of organization,
among other things. Maybe just a couple minutes on what
your vision for math Talk is.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
I think with math Talk, I think we want to
transform the relationship that parents and kids have with mathematics,
and so we want kids at their earliest ages to
see math is something that is a part of them.
It's a part of their world. It's something they can
access and utilize to make meaning and to accomplish any
(16:54):
goals that they have for themselves. One of our efforts
also is just thinking about how we and support schools
and teachers to be able to make real world connections
with the math that they teach through the books and
in classrooms. And so it's really been exciting. We've had
(17:15):
a bunch of successful pilots and we have a product
that we're going to do a little more testing on.
But I'm excited to be able to share that with
communities around the country beginning in twenty twenty six and beyond.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
I'm going to go back to your book for second.
You start the book with a passage from William Henry Moses,
who's your great grandfather, your father's grandfather. And he was
born in eighteen seventy two and grew up farming and
spent not much time in school, yet he graduated from
Virginia Seminary, became a preacher, was president of two colleges,
(17:54):
and this passage that you start the book with is
actually his own obituary that he wrote himself. Can you
talk just a little bit about that.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
Yeah, it was remarkable finding that. And so I didn't
know much about my dad's father growing up. So he
passed while we were in Tanzania, and my dad's mom
passed before we were born, and so I didn't know
anything about his grandfather and my great grandfather.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
And so I discovered William H.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Moses and the book The White Peril that he wrote
in published in nineteen nineteen when I moved to Mississippi
to work with my dad in the algebra project, and
so that really intrigued me. You know, it was like
I always thought of the story really began with my
(18:49):
dad and my dad deciding to go to Mississippi. But clearly,
once when I read that book, you know, my dad
was part of a much larger legacy that I wasn't aware.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
And so I.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Began trying to find trying to find as much as
I could about my great grandfather and who he was
and what he did.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
And so I.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Stumbled on a letter that he wrote, and you know,
one of his relatives had shared it with family members,
which just talks about how he would like to be
remembered basically, and so it was fascinating to hear his
voice and how he you know, describes his life and
(19:32):
the things that were important to him.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Yeah, that's terrific that you can tap into that legacy
of not only your father, your grandfather, but also your
great grandfather and be able to incorporate some of his
writings into the book.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
I loved.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
I loved his couple of the passages there. Now, he
had a pretty direct and very expressive writing style. Yours
is quite lyrical and evocative. Did you learn that style was?
Is that just natural or how did it evolve over time?
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (20:04):
I think I think it's just my voice, well, my
voice when I have a pencil or a pennant in
my hand. You know, I can't just talk like that,
and it takes a lot of editing.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
But I can't.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Yeah, I can't explain that other than I just feel
like a certain rhythm and a certain energy and an
emotion that I'm trying to communicate through writing. And a
lot of it feels like it's improvised. And then there's
a lot of work trying to make sense of what
I actually wrote and connect things in a way that
(20:42):
the reader can follow them and would be meaningful for
the reader.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Well, it does make sense, and it is meaningful for
all the prospective readers out there. The book is called
The White Peril. Now you have also some just comments
from various writers and people and professors, and Ben Affleck
had this to say, and I just want to ask
you what you think about if The White Peril is searing, honest, vulnerable, profound,
(21:11):
and undeniable. I loved it. In the distance between almost
experience and mind in the same place at the same
critical age is the distance perhaps between black and white America.
That's pretty powerful. What are your thoughts around that?
Speaker 3 (21:26):
I think because Ben and I grew up in Cambridge
in the same time. You know, we played in the
same baseball league, we went to the same high school.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
We had a lot of interactions.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
I think when he read the book, he saw Cambridge
through my eyes, and I think he saw a different
Cambridge than the Cambridge he saw in experience, as well
as kind of the same Cambridge that he saw in experience.
And so, you know, I think one of the beauties
of Cambridge again is just this idea of so many
(22:00):
cultures because of the educational institutions.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
When we were growing up.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
You know, there was still factories there and so there
was a working class community. But then the reality you
also we're living in different worlds and you know, this
Braddle Street and all these different worlds. And so when
you look at the education system, you know, in many
(22:25):
cases kids were getting with the same type of segregated
education that you might expect kids to get in the
South was happening in Cambridge, but the segregation happened and
who had access to like the higher level classes. You know,
we're all in the same building, but we're getting two different,
two distinct educations. And part of what I tried to
(22:48):
do with the book was to talk about that distance
between white and black America from the perspective of what
I've experienced in Cambridge and this really liberal place that
in many ways represents what's possible in democracy, but also
clearly represents like what's holding us back from achieving the
(23:12):
democracy that we like to achieve.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Yeah, that's well said, and I do think Ben Affleck's
comments or his writing here about your book is very
powerful and also very validating. What do you think your
dad would have thought about the book? I knew that
question was coming, right.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
I think it would like I just imagine him, like,
you know, it's sitting in the room and him being
there and him looking at it and never really like
cracking the page, and just but he knew I was
writing it, and he reluctantly would let me interview him.
And you know, one time I interviewed him and he
(23:52):
was like afterwards, he was like, you know, that was
I just did you a big favor.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
I think he was.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
He didn't, you know, I wouldn't say he would be
worried about what I was going to say. I think
he was. He was a really private person, and I
think there's certain things in there that I think he
would have probably preferred me not talk about but at
the end of the day, like every you know, the
folks that have read it that are his peers have
(24:22):
said that, you know, they feel he would really be
proud of me and what's in the book, and that
they feel like, in some ways it's a memoir, but
in some ways it's a biography of his life. And
I think my hope is that it presents him to
my family and to you know, this generation and future
(24:45):
generations in ways that he would want them to be
able to learn from him and to be able to
be inspired by him, and to not walk in his footsteps,
but to continue on that path that.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
He was on.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Last question, was it cathartic for you to write the book?
Speaker 3 (25:03):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Absolutely. This is my therapy.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Like I'm like, if folks have shrinks, I'm like, give me,
let me just give me a book and something and
a pen, and I'm just going to write it out and.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
I'll make my peace with it.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
So that part of it, you know, I'm able to
just process and reprocess you know, some things that are painful,
other things that I just don't understand. But in a
way where I felt like it helped alleviate a lot
of baggage.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Well, we've been speaking with Omo Moses. He's an educator,
he's the founder and CEO of math Talk, and he's
the author of the forthcoming book The White Peril, and
Almo has just been a pleasure talking to you. Thank
you for your insights and I wish you all the
best with the book.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Thanks for having me, Bick.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Thank you to our producer, Ken Carberry.
Speaker 4 (26:13):
Chart Productions at
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Some
Welcome back to What's at Risk. I'm Mike Christian. In
the White Peril. Omo Moses deathly interweaves his own life
story with excerpts from both his great grandfather's sermons and
the writings of his father, the civil rights activist Bob Moses.
(00:27):
The result is a powerful chorus of voices that spans
three generations of an African American family, all shining a
light on the black experience, all calling fiercely for racial justice.
Omo was born in nineteen seventy two in Tanzania, where
his parents had fled to escape targeted harassment by the
(00:48):
United States government. He did not encounter white supremacy until
the family moved back to America when he was four.
Here he learned what it meant to be black, came
of age in a black enclave of Cambridge, Massachusetts, became
a passionate basketball player, lived in the shadow of his
father's civil rights work, but did not feel like a
(01:10):
part of it until his college basketball career came to
an unceremonious end. Unsure what to do next, he took
up his father's offer to go with him to Mississippi
and teach math to the Algebra Project students. Omo didn't
know it yet, but it was among those young people
that he would find his purpose. Our guest today is
(01:36):
Omo Moses, educator, founder and CEO of math Talk, and
the author of the forthcoming White Peril, which is out
in January of twenty twenty five. Omo, how you doing.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
I'm doing great, Mike, Thanks for having.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Me, Thanks a lot for joining us. Maybe a good
place to start it would be for you to tell
our listeners just a little bit about your background.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
So I guess I love to start with. I'm a dad.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
I have two kids, two amazing kids, Johari who's twelve
and Kamara who's ten. And I'm also the son of
Bob and Janet Moses, and so they met in the
nineteen sixties in Mississippi during the Civil rights movement, and
so definitely see myself as a child of the civil
(02:18):
rights movement and just connected to all.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Of those then young people who work.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
To try to transform America for the better. Also, I'm
the CEO of math Talk, which is a public benefit
corporation that is developing a super cool app that transformed
that you know, you know, transforms math in your community and.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
In your environment.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
And we seek to become the POKEMONO of math learning.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Great, thank you. I read in your book this is
you quoting. I wrote this book because I had to.
I began writing it in eleventh grade and Karen Hawthorne's
Intro to Creative Writing class the only class in four
years of high school that managed to get me to
reach inside and share parts of myself. So why did
you have to write it? That's the obvious question, right.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
I think it's one of those things.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
I don't know if you've ever felt like there's something
that you absolutely have to do in life. And I
discovered in Karen Haughton Hawthorne's writing class that I had
a voice, and so it was really amazing to me.
You know, I was usually a quiet kid, didn't talk much.
She had a couple of free writing exercises and as
(03:38):
I began doing it, all these memories just emerged, and
most of them were memories of Africa that had been
buried in my own subconscious and when I began sharing
those with the classmates, it was like folks were really listening.
So it was one I felt like I had something
to say, but then when I said it, you know,
(04:00):
I just felt like people were paying attention, and so
that really sparked this interest in writing and figuring out
ways to share my voice and to tell stories.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
So you said you started in eleventh grade, which is
a while ago. I know you're still pretty young, but
still eleventh grade was a while ago. How did it go?
Was it a straight line of writing a little bit
every year or did it go and fits in spurts?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (04:26):
No, it was fits in spurts. And I had no
idea what I was going to write or what I
should be writing. I just knew at some point I
was going to write a book. And initially I started
writing poetry, and then I would write some short stories.
And when I went to college, I took a bunch
(04:47):
of creative writing classes. That's when I got kind of
turned on to writing screenplays and just writing. And so
initially I thought I was going to write something similar
to The Hobbit. Tolkien was one of my favorite authors,
and my dad introduced me to that book.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
I was like, all right, what's the version of the Hobbit?
Another version of the Hobbit that I can write?
Speaker 3 (05:11):
But you know, as you kind of as you get older,
you get more mature and you get a better sense
of what's important and meaningful.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
So it ended up becoming a memoir.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
And so when I initially set out, you know, I
was like, Oh, I'm just going to write something fictional
and just make some stuff up, and it's going to
be cool. But as I got older and it took
longer for me to get it done, it felt like
there was a real story that was important that just
connected to my experiences growing up or being born in
(05:44):
Tanzania and then moving to America at an early age.
Then also my experiences growing up as a child of
the civil rights movement.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
You referenced your dad, Bob MOS's well known educator and
certainly a well known civil rights activist, particularly his efforts
on voter education and registration in Mississippi during the Civil
Rights movement, sometimes known as the Freedom Summer Project. He
faced a lot of violence and intimidation in Mississippi as
(06:15):
he was going through that project. How did he view
that and share it with you and how has that
sort of impacted your life? I think you already alluded
to the fact that you're a child of the civil
rights movement, but what are your thoughts around that.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
He didn't talk much about the violence that he faced.
I mean, he talked about what he learned was that
if you get knocked down, that you have to get
back up. I think he and a lot of the
young people that were in Mississippi and organizing during the
Civil Rights movement were committed to risk their lives to
(06:51):
confront what they felt needed to be changed in America.
And I don't know where that decision came from or
how they made that decision, but you know, it was
clear that they were willing to put themselves in harm's
way to try to challenge America to live up to
its ideals and principles. And so, like, I've always remembered
(07:14):
this idea that, well, if you get knocked down, you
got to get back up, and I've just you know,
internalized that into whatever I'm trying to do. And so
you got to be willing to take risks, and inevitably
you're going to get knocked down, and you got to
be willing to try to do whatever you can to
get back up and stand up.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
He was a pretty significant guy, maybe a little less
known than John Lewis and certainly Martin Luther King, but
was he a fairly low key person. It seemed like
his wasn't driven by ego as much, but still was
writ in the mix with all the great leaders of
the sixties.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Yeah, I think he saw himself as an organizer. I
mean it was certainly a leader. I think he led
from in many instances from the back of the room
and was deeply invested in creating space for leadership to
emerge and other voices to emerge. And I think he
was always challenged with how he should assert himself and
(08:16):
to help folks move forward versus just create the space
for people to figure it out and for him to
be part of that conversation. And I think, you know,
it's part of what motivated me to write the book,
because he was in organizer, because he was in the background,
(08:37):
you know, I think his voice and his perspective hasn't
really been heard, and when it has been kind of
documented and shared, I think it's really been contextualized within
historic moments and the real work and the real sacrifices
that he and many others made were just in the
(09:00):
kind of mundane every day kind of door knocking, kind
of visiting people where they were having conversations and getting
people to move together. And so part of what the
book does is really provide a first person perspective of
his experience organizing in Mississippi and the threats to his
(09:22):
life that he confronted in doing that.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
He and your mom ultimately moved to Tanzania, as I
understand it, And you were born in Tanzania, and then
were you Do you have a recollection of Tanzania. I
know you moved back to Cambridge and lived in the
Port neighborhood of Cambridge. What was your childhood like there?
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yeah, I remember just growing up close to nature, that
in a vast space and being able, you know, being
surrounded by you know, mountains and dirt, and so I
remember that vividly. I remember being able to kind of
walk and explore alone in ways where I can't imagine,
(10:04):
you know, my two or three year old child walking
down the street by himself, just getting into whatever he
wanted to get into. And so there was just like
a deep sense of freedom that I associate with with
Tanzania and a deep sense of being connected to the earth.
And you know what I remember is leaving that and
(10:28):
losing our connection to that when we came to America.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
And then you grew up in the Port neighborhood and
maybe just tell our listeners a little bit what that
was like growing up in that period of time. And
you still live right there near that the.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Port is it's home man the eighties. Growing up in
the Port in the eighties really felt crazy. I've always
thought of it as like a microcosm to like any
major kind of urban city, But I think the beauty
of Cambridge is at it small and you have so
many things in close proximity to each other. But growing
(11:07):
up in the Port, you also got a sense of
even though you were in the backyard of Harvard and Mit,
there was a sense of like isolation and not really
having access to all the things that you were surrounded by.
But it was really a beautiful time. And so it
was like at during the emergence of hip hop culture
(11:29):
and music. I grew up with me and my brother
and then six sets of other brothers that were all
within a year or two of each other. I think
we got a taste of what it feels like to
just kind of run free and roam the streets and
just get into stuff that boys usually do that's not
(11:49):
gonna to help build character, but isn't going to set
you back and prevent you from doing whatever you want
to do in life. And so yeah, I like that
opportunity and the young people that I came of.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Age with, and you discovered basketball during that period of
time too.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Right, absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Cambridge is a huge basketball city, and so I mean
before Patrick Ewing, there was Jerry Scott and Rudy Williams
and so many others. But Patrick Ewing is probably the
most famous basketball player to come out of Cambridge. And
then after him was Ramel Robinson. And so there was
(12:30):
really this great tradition that galvanized the whole city and
really galvanized the black community in particular, but really the
whole city. Everyone wanted to be a basketball player, and
so it was interesting being able to be around all
of that talent and you know, go out to the playgrounds.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
And then you you ultimately went on to play in
college I think at Pittsburgh and then George Washington, if
I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Yeah, And so I had a pretty good run.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
We won the state championship my senior year in high school,
and I was playing with the same group of guys
I played together within eighth grade. We had won the
city championship, so that was one of the highlights. And
then yeah, I was determined to get a basketball scholarship
and to be able to play at the highest level,
and so that was really an honor to be able
(13:24):
to achieve that. And basketball enabled me to really travel
the world and to visit so many places that I
might not have been able to visit, and to engage
with people that I might not have been able to
engage with. For many of my friends and peers that
I grew up with, like their hoop dreams ended in
(13:44):
six seventh or eighth grade or maybe ninth grade, and
so they were left with trying to figure out who
they could be, who they wanted to be, who they
should be in society, and depending on how they identified
with what was in the community and what was around them,
(14:04):
depending on kind of the education that they received, I
think that had a significant impact on the opportunities that
they had later in life. For me, you know, I
was really lucky to be able to fall back on
the work that my parents had been doing. So when
my hoop dreams ended, I was able to connect with
(14:27):
my dad and connect with the work of the algebra
project as a way to try to figure out as
a young black man like who I should become in America.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
And then you did go on to major in maths
in your higher education career, and that has obviously been
impactful in your life. How how did that fit into that,
you know, sort of following in your dad's footsteps from
a from the math teaching standpoint, How did did that
(15:00):
sort of inform things that you're doing today with math
talk and that type of thing.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Coming out of college, I decided when I didn't know
what to do, I decided to work with my dad's
Algebra Project. And then as I got older, when I
became a father and I was trying to figure out
what am I going to do? I really tapped into
what I learned through my dad's Algebra Project to create
(15:26):
math Talk. And so one of the things that the
Algebra Project focused on was really helping young people learn
through their own common everyday experiences, through their community, through
their own language, and so really providing a context that
was meaningful for learning mathematics. Then that really grows out
(15:47):
of the work of the Algebra Project and thinking about
how to take every day experiences and turn them into
magical math moments. And so I saw the power in
that with my own kids, and have been thinking about
ways in which technology can be used to help other
adults in children's lives, whether their parents or teachers, to
(16:11):
be able to facilitate and spark similar moments for kids anywhere.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
And so that did lead you to start a company,
math Talk, which is now a technology type of organization,
among other things. Maybe just a couple minutes on what
your vision for math Talk is.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
I think with math Talk, I think we want to
transform the relationship that parents and kids have with mathematics,
and so we want kids at their earliest ages to
see math is something that is a part of them.
It's a part of their world. It's something they can
access and utilize to make meaning and to accomplish any
(16:54):
goals that they have for themselves. One of our efforts
also is just thinking about how we and support schools
and teachers to be able to make real world connections
with the math that they teach through the books and
in classrooms. And so it's really been exciting. We've had
(17:15):
a bunch of successful pilots and we have a product
that we're going to do a little more testing on.
But I'm excited to be able to share that with
communities around the country beginning in twenty twenty six and beyond.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
I'm going to go back to your book for second.
You start the book with a passage from William Henry Moses,
who's your great grandfather, your father's grandfather. And he was
born in eighteen seventy two and grew up farming and
spent not much time in school, yet he graduated from
Virginia Seminary, became a preacher, was president of two colleges,
(17:54):
and this passage that you start the book with is
actually his own obituary that he wrote himself. Can you
talk just a little bit about that.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
Yeah, it was remarkable finding that. And so I didn't
know much about my dad's father growing up. So he
passed while we were in Tanzania, and my dad's mom
passed before we were born, and so I didn't know
anything about his grandfather and my great grandfather.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
And so I discovered William H.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Moses and the book The White Peril that he wrote
in published in nineteen nineteen when I moved to Mississippi
to work with my dad in the algebra project, and
so that really intrigued me. You know, it was like
I always thought of the story really began with my
(18:49):
dad and my dad deciding to go to Mississippi. But clearly,
once when I read that book, you know, my dad
was part of a much larger legacy that I wasn't aware.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
And so I.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Began trying to find trying to find as much as
I could about my great grandfather and who he was
and what he did.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
And so I.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Stumbled on a letter that he wrote, and you know,
one of his relatives had shared it with family members,
which just talks about how he would like to be
remembered basically, and so it was fascinating to hear his
voice and how he you know, describes his life and
(19:32):
the things that were important to him.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Yeah, that's terrific that you can tap into that legacy
of not only your father, your grandfather, but also your
great grandfather and be able to incorporate some of his
writings into the book.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
I loved.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
I loved his couple of the passages there. Now, he
had a pretty direct and very expressive writing style. Yours
is quite lyrical and evocative. Did you learn that style was?
Is that just natural or how did it evolve over time?
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (20:04):
I think I think it's just my voice, well, my
voice when I have a pencil or a pennant in
my hand. You know, I can't just talk like that,
and it takes a lot of editing.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
But I can't.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Yeah, I can't explain that other than I just feel
like a certain rhythm and a certain energy and an
emotion that I'm trying to communicate through writing. And a
lot of it feels like it's improvised. And then there's
a lot of work trying to make sense of what
I actually wrote and connect things in a way that
(20:42):
the reader can follow them and would be meaningful for
the reader.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Well, it does make sense, and it is meaningful for
all the prospective readers out there. The book is called
The White Peril. Now you have also some just comments
from various writers and people and professors, and Ben Affleck
had this to say, and I just want to ask
you what you think about if The White Peril is searing, honest, vulnerable, profound,
(21:11):
and undeniable. I loved it. In the distance between almost
experience and mind in the same place at the same
critical age is the distance perhaps between black and white America.
That's pretty powerful. What are your thoughts around that?
Speaker 3 (21:26):
I think because Ben and I grew up in Cambridge
in the same time. You know, we played in the
same baseball league, we went to the same high school.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
We had a lot of interactions.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
I think when he read the book, he saw Cambridge
through my eyes, and I think he saw a different
Cambridge than the Cambridge he saw in experience, as well
as kind of the same Cambridge that he saw in experience.
And so, you know, I think one of the beauties
of Cambridge again is just this idea of so many
(22:00):
cultures because of the educational institutions.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
When we were growing up.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
You know, there was still factories there and so there
was a working class community. But then the reality you
also we're living in different worlds and you know, this
Braddle Street and all these different worlds. And so when
you look at the education system, you know, in many
(22:25):
cases kids were getting with the same type of segregated
education that you might expect kids to get in the
South was happening in Cambridge, but the segregation happened and
who had access to like the higher level classes. You know,
we're all in the same building, but we're getting two different,
two distinct educations. And part of what I tried to
(22:48):
do with the book was to talk about that distance
between white and black America from the perspective of what
I've experienced in Cambridge and this really liberal place that
in many ways represents what's possible in democracy, but also
clearly represents like what's holding us back from achieving the
(23:12):
democracy that we like to achieve.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Yeah, that's well said, and I do think Ben Affleck's
comments or his writing here about your book is very
powerful and also very validating. What do you think your
dad would have thought about the book? I knew that
question was coming, right.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
I think it would like I just imagine him, like,
you know, it's sitting in the room and him being
there and him looking at it and never really like
cracking the page, and just but he knew I was
writing it, and he reluctantly would let me interview him.
And you know, one time I interviewed him and he
(23:52):
was like afterwards, he was like, you know, that was
I just did you a big favor.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
I think he was.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
He didn't, you know, I wouldn't say he would be
worried about what I was going to say. I think
he was. He was a really private person, and I
think there's certain things in there that I think he
would have probably preferred me not talk about but at
the end of the day, like every you know, the
folks that have read it that are his peers have
(24:22):
said that, you know, they feel he would really be
proud of me and what's in the book, and that
they feel like, in some ways it's a memoir, but
in some ways it's a biography of his life. And
I think my hope is that it presents him to
my family and to you know, this generation and future
(24:45):
generations in ways that he would want them to be
able to learn from him and to be able to
be inspired by him, and to not walk in his footsteps,
but to continue on that path that.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
He was on.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Last question, was it cathartic for you to write the book?
Speaker 3 (25:03):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Absolutely. This is my therapy.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Like I'm like, if folks have shrinks, I'm like, give me,
let me just give me a book and something and
a pen, and I'm just going to write it out and.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
I'll make my peace with it.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
So that part of it, you know, I'm able to
just process and reprocess you know, some things that are painful,
other things that I just don't understand. But in a
way where I felt like it helped alleviate a lot
of baggage.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Well, we've been speaking with Omo Moses. He's an educator,
he's the founder and CEO of math Talk, and he's
the author of the forthcoming book The White Peril, and
Almo has just been a pleasure talking to you. Thank
you for your insights and I wish you all the
best with the book.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Thanks for having me, Bick.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Thank you to our producer, Ken Carberry.
Speaker 4 (26:13):
Chart Productions at
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Some
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.