Anne Moody's Former College Professor Recalls This 'Gifted Mississippi Activist and Writer'

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(Editor's note: Sociologist John R. Salter, Jr. is a well-known civil rights and labor activist. I am proud to publish this following piece he has written on Anne Moody, his former student at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi. On a personal note, I never met her, but Moody's book, Coming of Age in Mississippi, gave me powerful insight into the civil rights struggles of her times. It is a wonderful book, and a "must read." Moody died at the age of 74 on Thursday, Feb.5, 2015. Susan Klopfer)

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Mississippi author and civil rights activist, Anne Moody 

... we shall always remember a brave and plucky and committed 

human being who, despite the many and various vicissitudes, 

continued toward the Sun.   

John R. Salter, Jr.

I and my good spouse, Eldri, knew Anne Moody from the point that we and Anne arrived at Tougaloo Southern Christian College in late summer, 1961, myself as a professor and she as a student. We were in contact with her from about that point until late summer, 1994.

She was a fine student of mine in a number of courses, and became a close friend of Eldri and myself.  Passionately committed to social justice, Anne was a strong supporter of our Jackson civil rights movement which began very actively in latter 1962 as the economic boycott of the downtown Jackson area and which feathered out into our massive Jackson Movement in the spring of 1963.  

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If Anne often distrusted some components of government, she was an essentially trusting person when it came to human beings.

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Her role in our historic Woolworth Sit-In at Jackson Mississippi on May 28, 1963, is very well known. After the active demonstration phase of the Jackson Movement, she lent her valuable efforts as a CORE representative in other most challenging Magnolia [Mississippi state flower] situations. Her fine writing abilities are very well exemplified in her classic work, Coming of Age in Mississippi, and in a number of other pieces.

Moody's Coming of Agein Mississippi, a "must read."

In addition to being a very good friend, she was also, as a great many of my students and former students often are, an advisee of mine, and I her advocate, at many points. (From that perspective, I am ethically constrained from discussing any details in any personal challenges she may have faced.  I maintain confidences.  There is no chronological statute of limitations for me on those.)

But I will broadly mention two matters.  If Anne often distrusted some components of government, she was an essentially trusting person when it came to human beings.  In almost all of those cases, that trust was eminently justified.

But not all.  In 1991, she was significantly enmeshed – through no fault of her own –- in a bureaucratic/medical situation in New York City where she resided. She was able to contact me.  I extricated her from that mess pronto.

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Her book, Coming of Age in Mississippi, guarantees her immortality.

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In the earlier part of 1994, and not of her making, "something" tangibly occurred in which she had very good reason to fear for her personal liberty in New York City.  A faithful neighbor of hers, an elderly Jewish man, worked with me (I was in North Dakota) to put her on a fast track to our university town of Grand Forks in that rather remote state.  For about three months, in the spring of 1994, she and her son, Sasha, lived in a motel quite near our home. We assisted her in a number of ways, as we had on earlier occasions, and continued that for a time into the summer after she and Sasha moved on back East and contact with other writers. Then, we lost touch with her.

Her book, Coming of Age in Mississippi, guarantees her immortality.  But more than that, we shall always remember a brave and plucky and committed human being who, despite the many and various vicissitudes, continued toward the Sun.

Hunter Gray/ John R Salter Jr. / Hunter Bear, Pocatello, Idaho, February 6 2015

... at the Mississippi lunch counter

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(From Jerry Mitchell of The Clarion Ledger, Feb. 7, 2015):

Born in 1940 in Wilkinson County, she attended segregated schools and worked to help her poor family.

While attending Natchez Junior College, she became involved with the civil rights movement. She then attended Tougaloo College, where her involvement grew deeper.

On May 28, 1963, she took part in the sit-in at Woolworth's in downtown Jackson. A mob attacked her, Joan Trumpauer and Tougaloo professor John Salter Jr. and others, hitting them and pouring flour, salt, sugar and mustard on top of them.

It was the most violent response to a sit-in in the 1960s in the U.S.)

Link: http://www.clarionledger.com/story/journeytojustice/2015/02/06/anne-moody-has-died/23016675/

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HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq / St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk 

Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
and Ohkwari' . Check out our massive social justice website:
www.hunterbear.org

Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO

Core dimensions of my Community Organizing course:
http://www.labornet.org/news/0000/hbear.htm

Some early personal activist history / good people and issues:

http://civilrightsnewsreleases.blogspot.com/2015/01/hinter-bear-maintaining-normally-high.html

My expanded/updated "Organizer's Book,"
JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new 10,000
word introduction by me. Covers much of my
confrontational social justice organizing life to
date. Contains much how-to grassroots organizing
methodology: http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm

See this for mini-bio, efforts to prevent JM’s appearance in
Mississippi, a wide range of its many reviews, and some
photos: http://www.amazon.com/John-R.-Salter/e/B001KMEHWY/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Photos) 

Bruce Davidson Stunned World With Scenes From 1960s Civil Rights Movement

Photojournalist Bruce Davidson’s stunning black-and-white images documented scenes from the 1960s civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr.—from freedom marches and sit-ins to dilapidated schoolhouses and segregated movie theaters. In the video above, listen to Davidson recall the movement, his work and its impact as you view pictures from his 2002 photography book, Time of Change. Davidson’s work recalls a period of turmoil, anger, uncertainty and inequality as racial issues took center stage in America.

Source: AARP Bulletin Today | January 8, 2010

Blood Done Sign My Name; Film Leads List of 2010 Wilbur Award Winners

NEW YORK, March 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Blood Done Sign My Name, Jeb Stuart's film about a little-known chapter in the American civil rights struggle, leads the list of 2010 Wilbur Awards winners.

The Religion Communicators Council is presenting 14 Wilbur Awards to secular media organizations April 9 at the Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile. In addition, Bob Abernethy, longtime host of PBS' Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, is to receive a special Wilbur Award for contributions to public discussion of faith topics.

Stuart, best known for his work on Die Hard and The Fugitive, adapted Tim Tyson's best-selling book into a gripping story—told through the eyes of Oxford, N.C., residents, both black and white. Judges noted that the film's story of how residents risked their lives for civil rights resonated with the Wilbur Award's purpose: to recognize "excellence in the presentation of religious issues, themes and values" in secular print and online journalism, book publishing, broadcasting, and motion pictures.

More --
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Who Killed Emmett Till e-Book

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by Susan Klopfer, a new e-book about this important civil rights event that took place in the Mississippi Delta



I moved to the Mississippi Delta in 2003 as the Emmett Till cold case was opened. Living on the grounds of Parchman Penitentiary, a notorious compound with a fascinating history, gave me a unique opportunity to take a fresh look at this civil rights ground-breaking event and to meet some of the people who still had the story fresh in their hearts and minds.

Navy to honor civil rights martyr Medgar Evers

In the driveway outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi, civil rights leader Medgar Evers was shot to death by a white supremacist on June 12, 1963. His murderer was not convicted until 1994.





From Breaking News 24/7


WASHINGTON — Slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers will be honored Friday with a Navy supply ship named for him.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, a former governor of Mississippi, planned to announce the honor during a speech at Jackson State University in Jackson, Miss. The nearly 700-foot-long vessel named for Evers will deliver food, ammunition and parts to other ships at sea.

During the civil rights movement Evers organized nonviolent protests, voter registration drives and boycotts in Mississippi, rising to the post of national field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
In 1963 Evers was assassinated in the driveway of his home in Jackson after returning from a meeting with NAACP lawyers. His death prompted President John F. Kennedy to ask Congress for a comprehensive civil rights bill.

Evers was born in Decatur, Miss., in 1925 and served in the Army during World War II. He returned to Mississippi, earned a degree from Alcorn College in 1952 and became active in the NAACP and its civil rights work in his home state.

Thirty-seven when he was shot to death by a white supremacist, Evers was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. His killer, Byron De La Beckwith, was not convicted until 1994.
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While writing Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited, I had the honor and privilege of reading, researching and learning more about Medgar Evers. In the Delta and throughout Mississippi and the world, this early modern civil rights leader is remembered and loved. From talking to others, I learned that ..

MEDGAR EVERS was sixteen and a sophomore when World War I broke out. Within a year, he quit school and joined his brother Charles Evers in the U.S. Army. Medgar Evers was attached to a segregated battalion that served in England and after the Normandy invasion, in France.

The experience of travel opened up the world to him; the opportunity to leave the South provided an adventure he could not forget. In France, he found “a whole people – all of them white – who apparently saw no difference in a man simply because of his skin color, and this was perhaps the greatest revelation of all,” he once told his wife, Myrlie, recalled in her autobiography.

While Evers grew up in Decatur Mississippi, outside of the Delta, he would spend his first several years out of college in Mound Bayou of Bolivar County, working with Amzie Moore and Dr. T.R.M.Howard organizing NAACP chapters and investigating murders, and working also selling insurance.

Evers quickly came to know Aaron Henry and the three men began lifelong journeys to change Mississippi. All returning black veterans – Moore, Henry and Evers – faced the Delta’s familiar extremes, both old and new.

Myrlie Evers-Williams, his wife, wrote a beautiful book about Medgar and the times in which they lived, For Us, The Living. You can also read more about Evers at this Clarion-Ledger link.(sk)