Paul B. Moses

Paul Bell Moses (December 9, 1929 – March 24, 1966) was an American art historian, critic, and educator, specializing in 19th-century French art. One of the first African Americans to graduate from Haverford College in 1951, Moses taught at the University of Chicago from 1962 until his death.

Early life and education
Moses was born on December 9, 1929, in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, to Paul S. Moses, a house painter, and Annie Moses, a laundry worker. He graduated from Lower Merion High School in 1947. He enrolled at Haverford College as one of its first African American students in 1948. He endured racism at Haverford, living at home as a freshman because white students refused to room with him. He developed a passion for art and art history and became a protégé of art collector and philanthropist Albert C. Barnes, founder of the Barnes Foundation, which awarded Moses a scholarship that enabled him to study abroad at the Sorbonne and the École du Louvre during his junior year. Barnes wrote letters of introduction to French curators and collectors on his protégé's behalf. Moses graduated magna cum laude from Haverford in 1951.

Career
Moses served as a private in the United States Army from 1952 to 1954, serving as an army interpreter in France. Completing his military service, he taught briefly at the Barnes Foundation and Lincoln University before teaching at the American Overseas School of Rome from 1957 to 1959. While in Italy, he appeared as an extra in the 1959 film Ben-Hur, playing a Roman soldier opposite actor Charlton Heston. His time in France and Italy gained him fluency in French and Italian. Returning stateside in 1959, Moses completed a master's degree in fine arts at Harvard University and worked as a teaching fellow while pursuing his PhD. His dissertation focused on the etchings and monotypes of French Impressionist artist Edgar Degas.

Moses moved to Hyde Park, Chicago, and became an instructor in the Department of Art at the University of Chicago in the fall of 1962. He taught courses on 19th-century French prints and French Impressionism along with other classes in the humanities. He caused a stir when he refused to teach The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because of the novel's treatment of race, which he saw as diminishing to Black people. Liked and respected by his fellow faculty, Moses was promoted to the rank of assistant professor of Art and the Humanities in November 1964, becoming one of a handful of Black faculty at the university.

In December 1963, Arts et Métiers Graphiques invited Moses to publish a major catalogue raisonné of Edgar Degas. In 1964, he curated an exhibition of Degas's prints at the Renaissance Society. He received a prestigious Whitney Foundation grant to conduct research in France in 1963 and received an Inland Steel Faculty Fellowship in 1964. Regularly in demand as a lecturer and jurist for art shows, "he appears to have often been the only Black person in attendance at these events," reflecting his trailblazing role in the art world in Chicago and beyond. He also published reviews in the arts section of the Chicago Daily News. Throughout his life, he sketched and painted, especially landscapes inspired by the Impressionist artists he studied. He also collected art, especially French Impressionist art, including a monotype attributed to Camille Pissarro and prints by Honoré Daumier.

Personal life and death
While studying at Harvard, Moses met Alice Johnson, an elementary school science teacher and alumna of Cheyney State Teacher's College. After the couple married in the spring of 1962 and moved to Chicago, Johnson taught at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools for more than 20 years before her death in 1994. She served as the first African American and first woman president of the National Science Teachers Association. Paul and Alice's son, Michael Moses, born in 1963, attended Whittier College and taught physical education at the Laboratory Schools for over 30 years.

On the evening of March 24, 1966, Paul Moses was carjacked while driving alone in north Chicago. Two young white males, a 20-year-old and a 16-year-old, fatally shot him and stole his car. Moses died at the age of 36. Interrogated by police, the murderers alleged that Moses had "proposed they take part in an unnatural act," leading to a confrontation that culminated in Moses's murder. The carjacking motive was established in court, and both defendants were convicted. The adult received a prison sentence of 14 to 30 years, and the 16-year-old was committed to juvenile detention.

Legacy
Moses's research influenced Jean Adhémar's and Françoise Cachin’s Degas: The Complete Etchings, Lithographs and Monotypes, published in French in 1973 and in English a year later. In 1983, Haverford College established the Paul B. Moses Scholarship Fund, awarded annually to students who embody "the character, talent and qualities of Paul Moses." In 2022, the University of Chicago Library hosted an exhibit on Moses as a "trailblazing art historian." Michael Moses and University of Chicago graduate student Stephanie Strother curated the exhibit at the Regenstein Library. In 2023, the Barnes Foundation hosted an exhibit on Foundation scholarship recipients from 1927 to 1949, featuring Moses as one of four notable recipients.