Growing Up In Mississippi

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. “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 week before she began high school came the news of Emmet Till’s lynching. Before then, she had “known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was . . . 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. 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. 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 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. Praise for Coming of Age in Mississippi “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 timely reminder that we cannot now relax.”—Senator Edward Kennedy, The New York Times Book Review “Something is new here . . . rural southern black life begins to speak. It hits the page like a natural force, crude and undeniable and, against all principles of beauty, beautiful.”—The Nation “Engrossing, sensitive, beautiful . . . so candid, so honest, and so touching, as to make it virtually impossible to put down.”—San Francisco Sun-Reporter

With contributions from Elizabeth Aydelott, Fred Banks, Jimmy Buffett, Edward Cohen, Maggie Wade Dixon, Ellen Douglas, W. Ralph Eubanks, Richard Ford, Gwendolyn Gong, Carolyn Haines, Lorian Hemingway, Samuel Jones, Robert Khayat, B. B. King, John Maxwell, Alberto Mora, Donald Peterson, Noel Polk, Jerry Rice, George Riggs, Robert St. John, Sid Salter, Constance Slaughter-Harvey, Elizabeth Spencer, Clifton Taulbert, Keith Tonkel, Sela Ward, Wyatt Waters, Jim Weatherly, and William Winter Growing Up in Mississippi shares experiences and impressions from a multifaceted group representing all areas of the state and many professions, talents, and temperaments. Parents, teachers, churches, communities, landscape, and historical context profoundly influenced these men and women when they were young. In his revealing foreword, Richard Ford explores the very essence of influence and illustrates his conclusions by recalling an indelible incident between his mother and himself in the front yard of their home on Congress Street in Jackson, Mississippi. The volume then showcases poignant memories of other distinguished individuals: a governor and statesman, journalists, a news anchor, a playwright, novelists, memoirists, a publisher, a minister, educators and scholars, judges and lawyers, a test pilot and astronaut, a renowned watercolorist, a celebrated actress, and many more. Spanning more than five decades, these essays give us a glimpse of the people and places that nurtured these outstanding individuals and their remarkable gifts.

I wrote this book called “Escape from Mississippi”: The Diary of a Boy Growing up in the South in the 40s and 50s.’I’m going to take you to place’s tell you about people, that’s unique to me. . I will start in Columbus; go to Papa’s house and beyond. Everybody shopped in Columbus the biggest little town that was the closest to most of the country people. The hitch lot’s, where everybody parked their horses, Mules and wagons, for a fee. The proprietors in the little town of Columbus Jews owed. Most of it . There were a couple of black owed store’s. I will tell about the all White girls collage. Tell you about the County Fair. I will take you from up town through Seventh Avenue. The most popular street the most popular places. I will tell you about the schools in Columbus. Talk about the night life. The back door users, making love, through the floor. We’ll go to Steen’s, a little cross Road Town this was my Town. I’ll tell you about the Sand Road a hood within itself. A juke joint, people came from all over to hang out all night. Tell you about the churches the schools. Next to papas, two hundred and eighty five, acres of land. I’ll tell you about my best friend I grew up with. Tell you of the coal tin top house I was born in, only kerosene lamps, one working fireplace, to keep fourteen of us warm in winter. Tell you all about my sisters and brothers, about the hard work, Papa’s womanizing words papa and mama said when they were mad, slang words we used for a laugh. Tell you of the Uncles and Aunt’s Cousins. Tell you about friends of the family, people that worked for papa. Tell about papa’s saw mill. Tell you of Cattle and cops we raised. Tell you about the con men, the con preachers, the fireside ghost stories, the insane people stories. The baby with the man’s head, the poor, uneducated happy people, the biggest party in the country, the good year’s bad years… the crawling deadly creatures, the packs of wild dogs that roomed around in the fall… Moonshine makers, Moonshine runners.. I’ll take you to town Caledonia. I’ll tell you about the people the Schools Ball game’s Bar-b-q.

Raised under the racial segregation that kept her family's southern country hotel afloat, Norma Watkins grows up listening at doors, trying to penetrate the secrets and silences of the black help and of her parents' marriage. Groomed to be an ornament to white patriarchy, she sees herself failing at the ideal of becoming a southern lady. The Last Resort, her compelling memoir, begins in childhood at Allison's Wells, a popular Mississippi spa for proper white people, run by her aunt. Life at the rambling hotel seems like paradise. Yet young Norma wonders at a caste system that has colored people cooking every meal while forbidding their sitting with whites to eat. Once integration is court-mandated, her beloved father becomes a stalwart captain in defense of Jim Crow as a counselor to fiery, segregationist Governor Ross Barnett. His daughter flounders, looking for escape. A fine house, wonderful children, and a successful husband do not compensate for the shock of Mississippi's brutal response to change, daily made manifest by the men in her home. A sexually bleak marriage only emphasizes a growing emotional emptiness. When a civil rights lawyer offers love and escape, does a good southern lady dare leave her home state and closed society behind? With humor and heartbreak, The Last Resort conveys at once the idyllic charm and the impossible compromises of a lost way of life.

In this collection, essayists examine their lives, their memories of Mississippi, the reasons they left the state, and what drew them back. They talk about how life differs and wears on you in the far-flung parts of our nation, and the qualities that make Mississippi unique. The writers from all corners of the state are as diverse as the regions from which they come. They are of different races, different life experiences, different talents, and different temperaments. Yet in acceding to the magical lure of Mississippi they are in many ways alike. Their roots are deep in the rich soil of this state, and they come from strong families that valued education and promoted an indomitable optimism. Successes stem from a passion, usually emerging early in life, that burns within them. But that passion is tempered, disciplined, encouraged, and influenced by the people around them, as well as the landscape and the history of their times. These essays give us a glimpse of the people and places that nurtured the young lives of the essayists and offered the values that directed them as they sought their dreams elsewhere. Often they found that opportunity was within their grasp in their home state and came back to realize their full potential. They came back, in some cases, to retire to a familiar place of pleasant memories, to family and to friends. They all have a love and respect for Mississippi and continue, back home, to use their talents to help make the state an even better place to live.

Set in 1933 Mississippi, this thought-provoking story about a young boy who lives in an environment of racial hatred will challenge young readers to question their own assumptions and confront personal decisions. Full color.

Mary Winstead grew up in Minneapolis, captivated by her fathers tales of his boyhood in rural Mississippi. As a child, she visited her relatives down South, and her nostalgia for that world and its people would compel her to collect her fathers stories for her own children. But Winsteads research into her family history led her to a series of horrifying revelations: about her relatives ingrained racism, their involvement with the Klan, and their connection to the infamous 1964 murders of three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney.Writing with dignity, humility, and a profound sense of time and place, Winstead chronicles her awakening to painful truths about people she loved and thought she knew. She profiles her father, a man of remarkable charm and secretiveness. She traces her familys roots through post-Civil War poverty, Southern pride, and Jim Crow laws, exploring racism on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. Most movingly, she details her own inner war, a battle between her love for her family and their untenable beliefs and practices.