Book Review: Radical Equations: Math Literacy and Civil Rights, Volume 49, Number 3

The book is divided into two parts. Part I gives a vivid picture of the civil rights movement in Mississippi in the years 1961–1964. Moses not only conveys the drama of impoverished black Mississippians confronting the violence of whites determined to prevent them from voting, but also candidly and convincingly describes the difficult strategic and tactical decisions of organizers such as himself who were trying to transform these rural black communities into an effective political force. In Part II Moses describes the Algebra Project, which grew out of his efforts to improve the teaching of math in his own children’s middle school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the early 1980s. Alarmed that his oldest child would not be adequately prepared for the college-prep track in high school, Moses volunteered to teach beginning algebra to her and several of her more advanced classmates. He later expanded the program to include other schools in Cambridge and Boston. As word spread of the success of the Algebra Project, Moses was able to start similar programs in Chicago, Milwaukee, Oakland, San Francisco, Atlanta, and elsewhere. In 1992 he returned to his old battleground, Mississippi, and from there launched the “Southern Initiative”, directed by David Dennis, a Neal Koblitz is professor of mathematics at the University of Washington. His e-mail address is koblitz@math. washington.edu.