Important Links to Articles, Images, Audio and Visual Recordings on Her Life History
By Shelby M. Driskill
Guest Post – Copyright © 2017
#AnneMoody
Note: A short time ago, soon after posting an article about an audio recording of Anne Moody, I was contacted by Ms. Shelby M. Driskill, who informed me of other available resources on the civil rights pioneer. Moody, who died in 2015 at the age of 74, was the author of Coming of Age in Mississippi. The book chronicles her experiences growing up poor and black in Wilkinson County, in southwest Mississippi. It also shows how she became a civil rights activist while attending Tougaloo College in the early 1960s.
Ms. Driskill is one of a few scholars currently doing
research on Moody. In her email to me, she pointed out a number of links to
photographs, articles, and newspaper clippings, as well as audio and visual
recordings, all related to Moody. She also informed me of the research paper
she’s writing. When I saw her list of resources, I knew immediately that
it would be vital to readers, historians, and scholars from various
disciplines. With this understanding in mind, I asked Ms. Driskill for permission
to share her work as a guest post on my blog. I’m happy to report that she not
only gave permission, but she graciously provided additional information on the
life history of Moody. Her letter and list of resources are below.
We are grateful to Ms. Driskill for this important contribution. It is a
practical way for many to discover Moody and to learn of her role in our
history. But that’s not all. It is also another way in which we can help
preserve and promote her legacy as a writer, civil rights icon, strong black
woman, and significant figure in Mississippi history. We offer sincere thanks
to Ms. Driskill for this important service. Please read and share with others. -- Roscoe Barnes III, Chairman, Anne Moody
History Project
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Photo caption mistakenly lists the names in the wrong
order. Annie
Mae Moody is on the left, and Joan Trumpauer is on the right.
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In a graduate course
I am taking at the University of Richmond, we recently spent several weeks
reading and discussing Anne Moody's Coming of Age in Mississippi. I was
struck by her singular voice and powerful intelligence, and was so sorry that I
had not encountered her work sooner. In researching a paper on Ms. Moody, I
went on a bit of a mission to find any audio or visual recordings that might
shed light on the years following the action in Coming of Age and in
the process discovered the WNYC interview you mentioned in your recent post.
Had I known her family hadn't heard it yet, I would have reached out to you in
September. What a joy that they can hear her voice from so many years ago.
Below you will find other
resources I have found while working on the paper: audio and video housed in
academic libraries well as links to clippings, letters, and field
reports.
Thank you for all your
efforts to share Ms. Moody's work, drawing the attention of the public back to
her extraordinary and vital perspective.
With best regards,
Shelby M. Driskill
Anne Moody Resource Links
A beautiful recording of
Anne Moody's oral history, which is over an hour in length, is available
through the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. The archives can
provide an mp3 version of the interview (a fee for non-Mississippi residents),
or it can be listened to in their reading room. The catalog record is here. The transcript is here. I have gone through it while listening to the audio, and
most of the transcription is correct save for calling C.O. Chinn,
"Lucille".
Michigan State University
has a DVD available for interlibrary loan featuring a lecture that she gave at
the University of Mississippi in February of 1985. The link is here.
The University of
Mississippi has a VHS recording of her 1985 lecture at Millsaps
College in the library's Special Collection.
AM's 1969 Mademoiselle
article is now available through a digital archive of magazines. Part of the
article along the crease is obscured, but not so much as to prevent
understanding. The link is here,
and should you get a message that the copy is on loan, the archive will alert
you when it it available again.
For anyone interested in
other primary resources, here are links to documents related to Anne Moody's
work in Mississippi that are housed in the Wisconsin Historical Society Freedom
Summer Collection. These were found by searching under "Annie Moody".
Here is a
link to a field report written by Anne Moody in August 1964.
Here is
another report, this one from June-August 1963. Interestingly, while
this report is initially attributed to David Dennis, on its second page are the
words, "I, Annie Moody...". She continues with an account of being
fired upon while traveling by car on the same night the voter registration
office was ransacked. The document lists violent intimidation tactics used
against the voter registration workers and those trying to register.
This page of
the Mississippi Free Press contains a photograph of Ms. Moody on her
college graduation day. I've attached a jpeg version of the image to this
email.
This is a
link to the June 22, 1963 edition of the Mississippi Free Press that
details the experiences of Ms. Moody and many others during the mass arrests
that took place at the protest demanding attention to the assassination of
Medgar Evers. The portion that details her experience is on the lower portion
of the page.
Here is a
link to the June 1, 1963 Mississippi Free Press article detailing
the Woolworth's sit-in.
Looking under a
misspelling of her name -- "Ann Moody" -- one other item can be
found in the archive, a clipping from
the European edition of the New York Herald-Tribune that describes
her fundraising with Gene Young in New Jersey. I've attached an image of that
portion of the article.
Here is an
internal CORE document that informs chapter leaders of AM and Gene
Young's availability for fundraising and their effectiveness in front of
audiences.
Finally, the description
of the Anne Moody papers housed at Emory University has been temporarily
removed from their site but here is an
archived link describing the contents of that collection.
About the Author
Shelby M. Driskill is
currently a student in the University of Richmond School of Professional and
Continuing Studies. She received her BA in English from Mary Washington College
and her MFA from the University of Virginia where she was a Hoyns Fellow. In
addition to writing and research projects, she works in public library
programming and service, leads literature discussion groups for children, and
volunteers with the International Rescue Committee. She lives with her family
in Richmond, VA.
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For more information:
See the Anne Moody page here.
Questions about the Anne Moody History Project may be
directed to Roscoe Barnes
III via email at doctorbarnes3@gmail.com or roscoebarnes3@yahoo.com. For updates
on Anne Moody history and the on-going work of this community service project,
simply follow this blog or follow AMHP on Twitter (@AnneMoodyHP). #ComingOfAgeinMississippi
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