Omo Moses‘s book, The White Peril, is a coming-of-age story, a multigenerational family memoir, an epic father-son road trip, a searing account of the Black male experience, and a work that powerfully revives Reverend Moses’s demand for liberation. Moses deftly interweaves his own life story with excerpts from both his great-grandfather’s sermons and the writings of his father, the civil rights activist Robert P. Moses. (Link to archived interview https://cambridgeforum.org/mississippi-then-and-now/). Omo’s memoir is a compelling chorus of voices that spans three generations of an African-American family, shining a light on the Black experience, and demanding racial justice.
Omo will be joined in conversation by Jack Tchen, the Clement A. Price Professor of Public History & Humanities, and Director of the Price Institute on Ethnicity, Cultures, and the Modern Experience at Rutgers University.
Paris Alston, the host of GBH News and incoming host of the new Basic Black will moderate the discussion. Alston has extensive media experience reporting stories from around the world. A North Carolina native, she is a graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, where she studied media, journalism and global studies. Alston recently earned a Social Impact MBA from Boston University and is a member of the Boston and National Associations of Black Journalists.
Speakers
Omo Moses
Omo Moses, son of legendary civil rights organizer, Robert P. Moses was born in Tanzania in 1972. His parents had fled there to escape targeted harassment by the US government. However, he did not encounter white supremacy until the family moved back to America when he was 4 years old. He came of age in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he learned what it meant to be Black. Living in the shadow of his father’s Civil Rights work, Omo became a passionate basketball player, but he did not feel like a part of his father’s work until his college basketball career came to an unceremonious end. Unsure what to do next, he accepted his father’s offer to accompany him to Mississippi to teach math to Algebra Project students. It was among the young people there, that Omo found his purpose.
Jack Tchen
Jack Tchen is the Clement A. Price Professor of Public History & Humanities, and Director of the Price Institute on Ethnicity, Cultures, and the Modern Experience at Rutgers University. Tchen is the founding director of the Public History Project, the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program and Institute, at NYU. In 1980, he co-founded the NY Chinatown History project (now the Museum of Chinese in America) with Charles Lai. He has also authored several award-winning books, including Yellow Peril, which inspired by Rev. Moses’s book which was published in 1919. Tchen worked on the PBS documentary, the “Chinese Exclusion Act”, due to his in-depth knowledge of anti-Asian xenophobia.
Paris Alston
Paris Alston is the well-known host of GBH News and incoming presenter of the revised Basic Black program. Alston has extensive media experience reporting stories from around the world. A North Carolina native, she is a graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, where she studied media, journalism and global studies. Alston recently earned a Social Impact MBA from Boston University and is a member of the Boston and National Associations of Black Journalists.