Anne Moody

A heroine of the Civil Rights Movement. Anne Moody was born in 1940 in Wilkinson County near Centreville. In her classic 1968 memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi, she lucidly and eloquently articulates what it was like to grow up in poverty, to suffer racial discrimination, and to fight for social change as a civil rights activist. She attended Natchez Junior College on a basketball scholarship and Tougaloo College on an academic scholarship. She received her B.S. degree from Tougaloo in 1964. A member of CORE and NAACP, she spoke out against racial injustice and participated in marches, door-to-door canvassing and sit-ins. In 1963, when she and fellow Tougaloo students staged a sit-in at Woolworth's lunch counter in Jackson, it received national attention. For her courage, she was harassed, sometimes jailed, and often isolated from her family.

In 1975, she published a collection of stories, Mr. Death. She died in Gloster, Mississippi, on February 5, 2015.