06/19/2026
A few months ago, during a Monday evening work session at City Hall, Mayor Tim Taylor recommended a book: Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody.
First published in 1968, Coming of Age in Mississippi is an autobiography that chronicles the author’s journey from childhood to her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.
Anne Moody was born Essie Mae Moody in Centreville, Mississippi in 1940, but became “Anne” by accident. As a teenager, when she requested a copy of her birth certificate, a clerical error had recorded her name as Anne. She chose to keep it.
If you have not had the chance to read this memoir, it is a detailed, compelling, and unvarnished account of growing up Black in small-town Mississippi during the 1940s and 1950s.
Moody was a civil rights activist who participated in the sit-in at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Jackson.
She also spent much of 1963 working for voting rights in Canton at the Freedom House, the Mississippi headquarters of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).
The final portion of Moody’s book focuses extensively on Canton and the local Civil Rights Movement.
Anne Moody passed away in Gloster, Mississippi, on February 5, 2015. Visitors to Centreville can find both a civil rights marker honoring her life and a literary marker recognizing the important history she documented.
Earlier this year, Canton’s Freedom House was honored with a Freedom Trail marker, recognizing both its role in the Civil Rights Movement and its significance as the last surviving CORE Freedom House in Mississippi.
