Nina Simone wrote a song, "Mississippi God-damn." This coming of age story set in Mississippi could have provided her with the inspiration for the song. It is a lovely memoir.

I learned about Anne Moody from none other than herself, and how she grew up in south during a time racial segregation. A very good book! I highly recommend reading this!

An awe-inspiring memoir of a young woman deeply involved with the Civil Rights campaign in some of the most dangerous counties in Mississippi. It's tempting to say that such atrocities happened in the past, until you stop to think that there are states that even now are doing their utmost to erase such stories as this from our schools, and from history. Unless we can own our past, we are assuredly doomed to repeat it.

I never could decide if I liked this book or not. I can see its value for an America Since 1865 Survey course for sure because it gives a wonderful first hand account of one black woman's experience growing up in the deep South and how she got involved in the civil rights movement. However, it stops very early into the civil rights movement and, while it's a long book already, it leaves you feeling the story is unfinished. Admittedly, that is probably intentional, to re-enforce the idea of the unfinished work of the civil rights movement, however, there certainly was more to tell beyond 1963-1964 and I finished the book feeling let down because she just stopped her story cold. There's definitely much to discuss about this book and I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in that era of history, or who might be looking for a good book to add to a syllabus that includes race issues in America.

Anne Moody wird 1940 als Essie May Moody in Centreville, Mississippi geboren. Ihre Kindheit ist geprägt von tiefer Armut und der langsamen Erkenntnis, was es heißt, Mitte des vergangenen Jahrhunderts eine Schwarzafrikanerin im Süden der USA zu sein. Wie viele Schwarze muss Moody früh Geld verdienen, um überhaupt zur Schule gehen zu können, was die meisten Weißen gnadenlos ausnutzen, die die Schwarzen für wenig Geld hart arbeiten lassen. Die Ausnahmen lässt Moody jedoch keineswegs unerwähnt, sie soll während ihrer Ausbildungszeit auch viel Unterstützung durch wohlwollende Weiße erfahren.

Moodys Autobiografie ist in vier Teile gegliedert, „Kindheit“, „High-School“, „College“ und „Die Bewegung“. Im ersten Teil erzählt Moody von prägenden Ereignissen, der Erkenntnis, dass Weiße anders sind, anders essen können als die Schwarzen, oder die Begegnung mit zwei Onkeln im Kindesalter, die eine weiße Hautfarbe und einen weißen Vater haben, aber dennoch niemals als Weiße „anerkannt“ werden können, und die Absurdität des Rassismus verdeutlicht:

„Now I was more confused than before. If it wasn’t the straight hair and the white skin that made you white, then what was it?“ (Seite 35)

Besonders bitter ist die Erfahrung, die Essie May bzw. Anne mit der Familie des neuen Freundes ihrer Mutter machen muss, mit dem Rassismus unter Farbigen:

„Then I began to think about Miss Pearl and Raymond’s people and how they hated Mama and for no reason at all than the fact that she was a couple of shades darker than the other members of their family. Yet they were Negroes and we were also Negroes. I just didn’t see Negroes hating each other so much“. (S. 59)

Vor allem dieser erste Teil des Buchs liest sich flüssig wie ein Roman.

Anne Moody erweist sich als begabte Schülerin und geht nach der Grundschule zur High-School, wo sie weiterhin große schulische Erfolg erzielt, auch im Sport. Mit ihrem Eintritt in die High-School und ihrer zunehmenden Erfahrung mit weißen Arbeitgebern beginnt sie, sich für die Bürgerrechtsbewegung zu interessieren. Harte Arbeit bringt sie aufs College, und nun beginnt Moody ernsthaft, sich für die Rechte schwarzer Bürger zu engagieren. Dies bleibt in ihrer Heimatstadt nicht unbemerkt, was so weit geht, dass es zu gefährlich für sie wird, ihre Familie zu besuchen, die sie eindringlich bittet, ihre Arbeit für die Bürgerrechtsorganisation einzustellen. Auch wenn ich mich schon ein wenig mit der Bürgerrechtsbewegung beschäftigt habe, war es mir vor der Lektüre dieses Buchs nicht klar, wie gefährlich nicht nur ein solches Engagement für die Rechte schwarzer Bürger, sondern schon die bloße Existenz als Afroamerikaner in den Südstaaten war. Dies führte auch zu Konflikten innerhalb der schwarzen Bevölkerung, was sich in folgender Aussage Moodys spiegelt:

„I think I had a stronger resentment toward Negroes for letting the whites kill them than toward the whites.“ (S. 136)

Anne Moodys Autobiografie ist ein eindrucksvolles und sehr zugängliches Zeugnis über das Leben als Afroamerikaner im Süden der USA. Das Buch ist angesichts der Übergriffe der US-Polizei auf schwarze Bürger, die Schwarze grundsätzlich für verdächtig zu halten scheint, aktueller denn je. Anne Moody ist leider 2015 verstorben, trotz aller Erfolge der Bürgerrechtsbewegung hat sie es nicht mehr erleben dürfen, dass Afroamerikaner nicht mehr diskriminiert werden.

What a horrific and detailed description of the racism and civil rights movement in Mississippi....reading this book really opened my perspective and oddly gave me some hope for current times. Everything was so stacked against Ann and her fellow freedom fighters,violence and injustice at every turn, yet they rallied each other and continued to fight. Inspirational

I every so often will go and read reviews on here for novels that I had to read in high school that I enjoyed to see how they are perceived nowadays. While I was looking at what people thought of The Help I found a review talking about this autobiography saying that if you really wanted to know what it was like to work in the home of a white woman in pre civil rights America, read this instead. I’m so glad I did.

This was actually a pretty good book. I thought it would be boring because I had to read it for my history class. It was interesting and insightful. I loved the sections about her childhood and into highschool.

My interest in the civil rights movement was piqued recently from Remembering America, the memoir of JFK’s and LBJ’s speechwriter. Since that book gave a top-down look at the origin of civil rights legislation, I wanted the bottom-up viewpoint of someone who participated in the movement. I knew of this book because it was recommended (though not assigned) in a History of the Sixties class I took back in college. The professor praised it so highly, I was able to remember the name “Anne Moody” these twenty-odd years later.

To borrow a slogan from a different 1960’s movement, “The personal is political,” so it’s fitting that this is a personal memoir. For the first 250 pages, Ms. Moody tells about her childhood and adolescence in the segregated south. Her personal story may not have been typical, but it does exemplify one young girl’s struggle to rise above poverty and prejudice in order to get an education. Ms. Moody was smart, hard-working, and determined. It’s impossible to read this without admiring her.

The last quarter of the book is all about the movement. Among other things, Ms. Moody participated in the famous sit-in at Woolworth’s in Jackson (see picture below) and was beaten up for it. If there’s anything that this book made clear, it was the violence of the white backlash. I’m amazed that so many civil rights activists, black and white alike, had the courage to go on fighting in the face of death threats, beatings, lynchings, and bombings. I was sympathetic to her family members who begged her to stop. After all, she wasn’t just putting herself in danger, but them, too. And yet, on the other side, I could see why Ms. Moody questioned Dr. King’s teachings of non-violence. Who wouldn’t be enraged at the bombing of a church that killed four innocent black girls? And those are just the well-known murders.

I was a little disappointed that the book did not mention the Civil Rights Act of 1964 at all. It did mention JFK’s assassination. But LBJ was at the nadir of his disfavor with the public when the book was published, so perhaps Ms. Moody had nothing good to say about him at that point. I wonder what she’d say today.

This book was a fast, absorbing, and informative read, though I would not say it is the definitive book on the civil rights movement. It is exactly what I was looking for initially: the perspective of one person on the ground. Nor is it a rose-colored account; at times, it is downright raw. But the personal is political, and for that reason it’s simultaneously a slice of history and a lesson in the values of bravery and self-discipline.

3 stars

I really dislike reviewing biographies and especially autobiographies. Who am I to say whether it is good or not? Who am I to judge another persons life? What is right or what is wrong? How that person saw their life unfold or what they thought of certain incidents that happened? Only they have a handle on that.

In this book I remember a lot of the incidents that Moody mentions. I believe Moody to be ten to twelve years older than me, so more of the age to actually be involved. She was also in Mississippi which was a hotbed of racial injustice and besieged with civil rights violations. She had met Medgar Evers, I knew him from the news, she was local to the church bombing and death of the "Sunday school girls', I watched the coverage on TV, she knew Martin Luther King, I read about him in school and watched his coverage on TV.

At about the same time Moody was coming in to her own, I had lived in Mississippi while my Dad worked construction. Not there for long, but relatively close to where Moody grew up. I can remember the "White Only" signs, the "Colored bathroom" signs, the "No Niggers Allowed" signs. I can remember walking down the street with my mother and Black men stepping off the sidewalk, lowering their heads, to let us pass. Store clerks telling Black people to stand aside and let us up to the counter - ahead of them. We did not live there long, but I saw a whole new way of life and I never forgot it. So this book brought back to memory a lot of what I saw during that time.

Moody was a feisty girl - right from the beginning and she fit right into the civil unrest and social injustice that was going on as she aged. I remember watching those people and situations from afar - Anne Moody lived them.

This was really good. I bought this second-hand copy about ten years ago, and it's been sitting in my bookcase ever since. After reading and watching a number of stories set in the American South over the past few months, I was finally in the mood to give this a shot.

And I'm so glad I did! I've read quite a bit about the civil rights movement, African American history, and especially the period between 1955-1975. Yet, here's a perspective that is so personal that it adds a whole new dimension to that history, at least for me.

The thing is, everyone knows civil rights workers, especially black ones, were doing dangerous work (the first American history assignment I ever had to complete was on Medgar Evers - I'm pretty sure that's also what started my interest in this topic). I know they were doing something revolutionary. I know Mississippi was as conservative and as racist as it gets in the U.S. But I didn't truly know. And while I still can't claim to know now, because I'm not black and I haven't lived it, Anne Moody's autobiography has brought me that much closer to how dangerous life in Mississippi really was.

Anne (then still called Essie Mae, which she later changes to Annie/Anne), grows up in abject poverty in Centreville, Madison County, which she believes to be the most dangerous place in Mississippi when you're black. Of course, she does not realize this right away: as a child, she only knows that they don't have much money, and that the worlds of white and black Americans are separate. But as she grows up, and especially when she starts work as a servant for several white families while still in school, the danger she is in slowly starts to dawn on her.
The true turning point comes when Emmett Till is killed, and Anne's mother urges her to just do her job without letting on that she is aware of the murder. Meanwhile, it becomes clearer and clearer (although Moody never explicitly says so) that the woman she works for is part of the KKK. After Till is murdered, she (Mrs. Burke) tells her that what happened to him happened because "he got out of his place with a white woman" (125).

After this, Moody writes:
"I went home shaking like a leaf on a tree. For the first time out of all her trying, Mrs. Burke had made me feel like rotten garbage. Many times she had tried to instill fear within me and subdue me and had given up. But when she talked about Emmett Till there was something in her voice that sent chills and fear all over me.
Before Emmett Till's murder, I had known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was a new fear known to me - the fear of being killed just because I was black. This was the worst of my fears" (125).

Already powerful in itself, those words resonate even more now, in the wake of several police killings of black men and women like Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, and Eric Garner, to name just a few out of many.
The sudden realization that her life is in danger simply because of the color of her skin changes everything. Suddenly, she realizes how tense Centreville is becoming. She notices how livid Mrs. Burke is when her son acts friendly towards her. She sees how terrified her mother and other family members are after a local family's house is burnt down and no one is held responsible.

When she gets to college, she slowly becomes more interested in the civil rights movement, and becomes involved with CORE. And while some of the stuff she relates is well-known because it's now part of American history at large (e.g. the Woolworth's sit-in, the March on Washington) it's still fascinating to hear everything told from her perspective, because she also relates what working with CORE was like during the large stretches of unpublicized time in between big events. And it was tough! Jeez, it was tough.
At 23, working with CORE in Canton, MS, Anne Moody can no longer go home because her hometown has become too dangerous, which means she cannot visit her mother. She has no money to speak of. She and her fellow CORE workers have no food, unless someone helps them out. Their voting project is not going well because almost every black person in Mississippi is terrified, they are constantly intimidated by white locals and the police, and anyone associated with the project is continuously jailed, beaten up, or killed. No wonder Moody takes a six-month break because her nerves were fried.

That unadorned, personal perspective is what makes this autobiography so fascinating and terrifying all at once. This actually happened. Much of this still happens.

It's funny, when teaching students about race now, Dr. Martin Luther King is hailed as a hero (and rightfully so).
But back in the sixties, whites hated MLK. And I mean really hated him. Even many black southerns did not want to be associated with him, because he was too radical. He was a radical! In addition to Moody's personal experiences (especially those in high school and college), and in addition to learning about Joan Trumpauer, a white southern civil righs badass (seriously), that is the part I want to remember most: MLK was a radical. He was a revolutionary. So, whoever stands up and stands out as radical and revolutionary now...we better pay attention. They might be hailed as a hero someday, although hopefully they won't have to be killed for their ideals first.

Mississippi, Goddam. Anne Moody's memoir makes my heart hurt and my soul stir with anger towards a state, and a country really, where citizens working towards making an accessible democracy for all were repeatedly terrorized and brutalized as those in authority either turned a blind eye or took an active role. In addition to Moody, thousands of people had to remain determined in the face of violence to achieve some level of justice and the Voting Rights Act, which should never be taken for granted, especially now that some in power have insisted on a national voter's identification. Moody's successor, Michelle Alexander, tells us this is a thinly veiled attempt to disenfranchise poor, black and brown voters. Moody herself is a brave voice, and she doesn't spare a detail of how she becomes disillusioned by the Movement, temporarily, and then by her affiliation with the church and God. I was reminded here of Elie Wiesel's NIGHT.

As a worker for SNCC in a terrifying place known as Canton, Mississippi, she is harassed and threatened daily. At one point, Moody and her fellow workers must sleep in the woods to avoid the wrath of a lynch mob. Her family in Centreville, Mississippi warn her not to return to her home because they have received threats, and she doesn't see her mother for almost three years. Her uncle was shot dead, but the murder is unsolved.

There is so much history and relevancy to Moody's story because her story seems to be repeating itself again as we see that more atrocities are being committed by the state and thus a new need for more courage and action.