Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody

so candid, so honest, and so touching, as to make it virtually impossible to put down.In my search for a way of teaching American history as something that truly belongs to women and to men, to the powerful as well as to those who lack power in a formal sense, as something that is not the story of white people with an unusually interesting person of color charitably thrown in for good measure, I have found several popular texts that have functioned to change the classroom conversation in substantive and foundational ways, permitting students not only to see and understand what it meant to be young, female, and poor, for instance, in another time and place, but to explain to students why and how significant historical changes occurred and occurred precisely because of what it meant to be young, female, and poor at that particular moment. It hits the page like a natural force, crude and undeniable and, against all principles of beauty, beautiful.' - The Nation rural southern black life begins to speak. a timely reminder that we cannot now relax.' -Senator Edward Kennedy, The New York Times Book Review 'Something is new here. 'A history of our time, seen from the bottom up, through the eyes of someone who decided for herself that things had to be changed. A deeply personal story but also a portrait of a turning point in our nation's destiny, this autobiography lets us see history in the making, through the eyes of one of the footsoldiers in the civil rights movement.

Through the NAACP and later through CORE and SNCC, she experienced firsthand the demonstrations and sit-ins that were the mainstay of the civil rights movement-and the arrests and jailings, the shotguns, fire hoses, police dogs, billy clubs, and deadly force that were used to destroy it. A straight-A student who realized her dream of going to college when she won a basketball scholarship, she finally dared to join the NAACP in her junior year. the fear of being killed just because I was black.' In that moment was born the passion for freedom and justice that would change her life.

Before then, she had 'known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. The week before she began high school came the news of Emmet Till's lynching. 'Anne Moody's autobiography is an eloquent, moving testimonial to her courage.'- Chicago Tribune Born to a poor couple who were tenant farmers on a plantation in Mississippi, Anne Moody lived through some of the most dangerous days of the pre-civil rights era in the South. The unforgettable memoir of a woman at the front lines of the civil rights movement-a harrowing account of black life in the rural South and a powerful affirmation of one person's ability to affect change.

Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody