Anne Moody's Hometown Church

A Place of Worship, History and Water Baptism

By Roscoe Barnes III

Chairman, Anne Moody History Project

Copyright © 2017

#AnneMoody

Civil Rights pioneer Anne Moody attended this church while growing 

up in Centreville, Miss.

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Earlier this week, just one day after Christmas, I took a drive to see Mt. Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church in southwest Mississippi. It is a place I had to see. After all, it is the church that Anne Moody attended and the one where she was baptized. It’s also the one featured in her book, Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968). Several people from the church are mentioned in the book, including the Reverend Tyson, Reverend Cason, and Sister Jones. The church has a significant place in the narrative of Moody's life story. Below are a few excerpts from her book.

“Shortly after we moved in I turned five years old and Mama started me at Mount Pleasant School. Now I had to walk four miles each day up and down that long rock road. Mount Pleasant was a big white stone church, the biggest Baptist church in the area.

The school was a little one-room rotten wood building located right next to it. There were about fifteen of us who went there. We sat on big wooden benches just like the ones in the church, pulled up close to the heater. But we were cold all day. That little rotten building had big cracks in it, and the heater was just too small.” -- Chapter 1, Coming of Age in Mississippi

“Even though Mama stopped going to Mount Pleasant when we moved from the country, she continued to pay her membership dues.”

“At Mount Pleasant the men sang through their noses, and here [Centreville Baptist] the deacons were doing the same thing, singing through their noses and hollering and going on. At Mount Pleasant I had even seen men cry in church like women, when they finished praying. At least these men weren’t crying, I thought, but they were hollering just the same. And just like at Mount Pleasant, I couldn’t understand one word of any song. All the old ladies did, though. They were humming right along with them.” – Chapter 5, Coming of Age in Mississippi

Both of Moody’s parents, Elmira “Too Sweet” Jefferson and Fred Moody Sr., are buried in the cemetery located across a gravel road in front of the church. Her mother died on July 27, 1976, and her father died on May 14, 1980.

The original church building has been torn down and replaced with the current brick structure. It sits on a small hill off of Highway 24 in Wilkinson County. It’s only a few miles east of Woodville. At one time, the old school house that Moody attended as a child was located near the church, but it too has been demolished.

This marker at the front of Mt. Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church lists 

several names that are featured in Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968).

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Attached to the outside front structure of the building is a concrete history marker that gives a short overview of the church’s history. Readers of Moody’s book will instantly recognize several names on the marker that are mentioned in the book.

Reverend Cason

“Reverend Cason, the minister of the church, taught us in school. He was a tall yellow man with horn-rimmed glasses that sat on the edge of his big nose. He had the largest feet I had ever seen. He was so big, he towered over us in the little classroom like a giant. In church he preached loud and in school he talked loud.” – Chapter 1, Coming of Age in Mississippi

Reverend Tyson

“The new minister, Reverend Tyson, was short, dark, and soft-spoken, just the opposite of Reverend Cason. He gave a brief sermon and then talked about revival which would be starting in a week. The look Mama gave me when he mentioned ‘revival’ made me suspicious of why she came back to church the month before baptism.” – Chapter 5, Coming of Age in Mississippi

The current pastor of the church is the Reverend L.C. Weatherspoon Sr. His assistant pastor is the Rev. LeReginald Jones, the great-grandson of Edna Jones, who is known as “Sister Jones” in the book. Sister Jones is mentioned in the section that covers Moody’s baptism.

Sister Jones

“Usually during revival season older sisters of the church recruited candidates for baptism and Sister Jones always outdid the others. During revival she went from house to house, hopping on her stick, trying to get members with un-baptized teen-agers to have them join the church. A lot of parents got their children to join by telling them that Sister Jones would put the ‘bad mouth’ on them if they didn’t. Now there was Mama nodding her head to everything Sister Jones was saying.” – Chapter 5, Coming of Age in Mississippi

Mt. Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church is located off of Highway 24 in 

Centreville, Miss. It is nine miles east of Woodville in southwest Mississippi.

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Learn MORE about Anne Moody! Visit here to see

the timeline of important events in her life history!

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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