Coming of Age in Mississippi

Anne Moody was born Essie Mae Moody on September 15, 1940 in Centreville, Mississippi. As a girl, she cleaned white neighbors' houses to help support her family. She received a bachelor's degree from Tougaloo College in 1964. During these years she was active in civil rights efforts in Mississippi, working with the Congress of Racial Equality, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In 1963, she joined a racially mixed group in a sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Jackson, Mississippi.

She wrote Coming of Age in Mississippi, which was published in 1968, while living in New York. This non-fiction work described what it was like to grow up black in the era of Jim Crow. Her other book, Mr. Death, is a collection of short stories for young people on the theme of mortality and was published in 1975. She held a series of non-writing jobs, including as a counselor in a New York City antipoverty program, before returning to Mississippi. She died on February 5, 2015 at the age of 74.

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