She saw friends and family shot, burned alive in their homes, and dragged in the woods to be stripped naked and beaten, all at the hands of white Southerners. She was never subservient, though you could argue she was lucky. When one racist white woman locked the front door so Moody would be forced to enter in the rear (which social norms required of black folks), Moody banged on the front door until someone else let her in. Moody worked most of her life, too, serving mostly in white people’s homes. Photo for USA Todayīefore that, she was a little girl who grew up poor, constantly changed addresses, gained a new sibling every year or two, and could barely get the clothes she needed to go to school. That’s Moody on the far right sitting at the counter.

Most famously, she was one of the protesters who participated in a sit-in at Woolworth’s. I hadn’t heard of Anne Moody before I saw her book on the shelf at Barnes and Noble.

She has relationships to Medgar Evers, Emmett Till, and other famous activists. Moody begins with her first memories and ends in her 20s at a church a group singing “We Shall Overcome,” wondering if they ever will. Malcolm lived exclusively in the North, whereas Moody was only in the South.

I wanted this book to see if I could get an entirely different, yet still intensely personal, side of the time period compared to Malcolm X’s autobiography, published in 1965 shortly after his death. Anne Moody’s autobiography, Coming of Age in Mississippi, was originally published in 1968.

Anne moody books