A00056 - Anne Moody, Author of "Coming of Age in Mississippi"

Anne Moody (aka Essie Mae Moody) (b. September 15, 1940, near Centerville, Mississippi - d. February 5, 2015, Gloster, Mississippi), was an American civil rights activist and writer whose autobiographical account of her personal and political struggles against racism in the South became a classic.

Moody, the daughter of poor African American sharecroppers, received her early education in the segregated school system of the South.  In 1959, she was awarded a basketball scholarship and attended Natchez Junior College, later transferring to Tougaloo (Mississippi) College.  While a student at Tougaloo, Moody became active in the Civil Rights Movement.  She helped organize the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and in 1963 participated in a widely publicized sit-in demonstration at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter.

After graduating from Tougaloo in 1964, Moody worked as the civil rights project coordinator for Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, until 1965.  Eventually, she became disenchanted with certain aspects of the Civil Rights Movement and moved to New York City, where she began to write her autobiography, Coming of Age in Mississippi.  Published in 1968, the book provides an eloquent and poignant account of Moody's impoverished childhood, her struggle against the pervasive racism of the Deep South, and her work as a civil rights activist.  It received high praise as both a historical and a personal document and is considered of major importance in the study of the Civil Rights Movement.  Her only other published work is Mr. Death: Four Stories (1975).