By Roscoe Barnes III, PhD
Chairman, Anne Moody History Project
Copyright (c) 2019
#AnneMoody
#ComingOfAgeinMississippi
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| This column by Jackie Robinson appeared in the Saturday, Sept. 26, 1964 issue of the New York Amsterdam News (page 21). It was found and recommended by Ms. Shelby Driskill. |
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Although much is said about Jackie Robinson (1919 - 1972) breaking the "color barrier" when he became the first black to play in Major League Baseball, little is said or known about his work with civil rights activists like Anne Moody. Robinson was quite active in the struggle for freedom and justice, and he was a big supporter of Moody. In fact, he was the prominent person who urged her to share her story in a book. She followed his advice and wrote the classic memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968). He and Moody also traveled and worked together to raise money for a memorial to honor civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, who were murdered in Mississippi.
In 1964, Robinson penned a column about Moody's life and dedication to the civil rights movement. He wrote about her courage and her sacrifice, including the fact that she could not return home because of the many threats against her life and her family. Moody was born and raised in Centreville, Miss., a small rural town in the southwest part of the state. She left Mississippi in 1964, the year she graduated from Tougaloo College. She eventually returned to her home state in 1976 to be with her dying mother. Moody spent her final years in Gloster, Miss., near her hometown. She suffered from dementia. When she passed in 2015 at the age of 74, her sister, Adline, said she was never comfortable being back in Mississippi.
Robinson's column was published in the Sept. 26, 1964 issue of the New York Amsterdam News newspaper. It was brought to my attention by my friend and fellow Moody scholar, Shelby Driskill. She said of the column: "It's such a fascinating moment in time. His affection for her is so clear and his influence on her life so profound."
Robinson's column appears below.
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Home Plate
She Can't Go Home Again
by Jackie Robinson
"Home," someone once said, "is a place you can go to when there's nowhere else to go."
Let me tell you the story of a Mississippi girl. She is twenty-three years old. Her name is Annie and she can't go home again.
Annie is one of the displaced persons in the battle for human dignity, a fugitive who became a fugitive in the cause of freedom.
She didn't murder anyone. She didn't steal. She did nothing more immoral than to stand up in her Mississippi community and raise her voice in protest against the conditions under which she and her family and her people are forced to live. She is guilty of the crime of volunteering to work for civil rights.
In Mississippi, that is a crime. And Annie, who made the mistake of believing that the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, Constitution and Civil Rights Bill apply to Mississippi, was soon made to recognize that fact.
But before she realized that the Star-Spangled Banner and Oath of Allegiance are meaningless in Mississippi, Annie protested. She protested against the fact that Government-sponsored factories offered whites jobs at sixty to seventy dollars a week -- and segregate those Negroes whom they hire. Many, many Negroes cannot get jobs in those factories. So they work for eight to ten dollars a week, interminable hours a day, caring for white peoples' home and children. Annie thought it was wrong that discrimination and segregation could be practised in a factory which, in part, owes its existence to the tax dollars of black as well as white citizens. She said so -- out loud.
Annie saw young, married couples forced to live in single houses built to accommodate one family -- as many as sixteen couples occupying such facilities because they could afford no better. She saw some of the same people fired because they had expressed the desire to vote and attempted to register to do so. She protested that too.
Early this year, Annie's uncle and three other Negroes were murdered in circumstances somewhat similar to the murders of the infamous Goodman-Chaney-Schwerner case. When their bullet-ridden bodies were gound, there was no national publicity of the kind which attended that case. Annie knows why. They were only Negroes. In Mississippi, the life of a Negro is dirt cheap. Annie knows that if Goodman and Schwerner had been Negroes as Chaney was, the country might never have known their deaths occurred.
Annie could tell that her turn was coming soon. She was threatened and harassed. A sister who resembles her was the constant object of surveillance and veiled threats. Right now, Annie knows that the rest of her family, back home, is still subjected to the nerve-wracking business if hate-filled looks and words, the knowledge that any one of them could be mysteriously struck down -- or could mysteriously disappear. What's worse -- from past experience -- they all know that the Government, state or federal, would do nothing about it. For all they know, law enforcement officers -- white -- could be involved in helping the murderers or assailants. It has happened before. And when it happened, people like former Attorney General Robert Kennedy have told the country the national government has no jurisdiction.
Annie can't understand that. She can't understand how they can free Klansmen who shoot down a Negro colonel. She can't understand how, despite the President's recent statement that arrests were imminent in the Meridian murders, nothing has happened. Annie understands one thing. She can't go home again. Actually, since Mississippi is her home, Annie has no home.
There are too many Annies in this land where the free and brave cannot be safe. Perhaps, some day, the American people will rise up and demand that their Government do something about it besides pass civil rights bills and mouth pretty words. Maybe!
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Want to know 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, Ph.D. 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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