One of the more underrated men in American history is Bob Moses, who played a critical role in organizing the voting rights movement in Mississippi forty years ago. Anyone who has ever read the histories of that period will run into his name again and again, whether it be in Taylor Branch's magisterial two-volume biographies of MLK, or Todd Gitlin's memoir, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage, or anyplace else that touches on that period in American history. Moses was a reluctant warrior, whose "leadership style" often consisted of asking indigent sharecroppers what they thought their problems were, and how best they thought their problems could be solved, rather than dictating solutions from on high.

In The Nation this week, a number of writers take up the theme of "American Rebels". Included among such noted rabblerousers as Walt Whitman, I.F. Stone, Dorothy Day, and Paul Wellstone is Bob Moses. While it is gratifying to see Mr. Moses get his due, the tone of the article, written by Tom Hayden, as well as the company in which he is kept (the other nine people profiled are dead), is funereal. Far from eulogizing someone who is still amongst the living, and refighting ancient battles from the 1964 Democratic Convention, Mr. Hayden should have spent more time discussing Moses' latest endeavor, The Algebra Project, which attempts to give low-income students the necessary math skills to succeed in the 21st Century. Not every progressive battle need be viewed in the past tense.