Anne Moody

Anne Moody (September 15, 1940 – February 5, 2015) was an American author who wrote about her experiences growing up poor and black in rural Mississippi, and her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement through the NAACP, CORE and SNCC. Moody fought racism and segregation from when she was a little girl in Centerville, Mississippi and continued throughout her adult life around the American South.

Moody, née Essie Mae Moody on September 15, was the oldest of eight children. After her parents split up when she was 5 or 6 years old, she grew up with her mother, Elmira aka Toosweet, in Centreville, Mississippi, while her father lived with his new wife, Emma, in nearby Woodville. At a young age Moody began working for white families in the area, cleaning their houses and helping their children with homework for only a few dollars a week, while earning perfect grades in school and helping at Mount Pleasant church. After graduating with honors from a segregated, all-black high school, she attended Natchez Junior College (also all black) in 1961 on a basketball scholarship.

Then, she moved on to Tougaloo College on an academic scholarship, to earn a bachelor's degree. She became involved with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. After graduation, Moody became a full-time worker in the Civil Rights Movement, participating in protests and a sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Jackson, when a mob attacked her, fellow student Joan Trumpauer, and Tougaloo professor John Salter, Jr., pouring flour, salt, sugar, and mustard on them, as depicted in a Jackson Daily News photograph. Two weeks after the sit-in, the Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers was assassinated outside his family home in Jackson. She was arrested in Jackson, Mississippi for attempting to protest inside of a post office with 13 other protesters, including Joan Trumpauer, Doris Erskine, Jeanette King, Lois Chaffee.

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