Short Synopsis
Anne Moody shares her experiences growing up in the rural South in the 1940s and 50s, and explains how she became involved in the civil rights movement.

Full Synopsis
Born to a poor couple who were tenant farmers on a plantation in Mississippi, Anne Moody lived through some of the most dangerous days of the pre-civil rights era in the South. The week before she began high school came the news of Emmet Till's lynching. Before then, she had "known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was…the fear of being killed just because I was black." In that moment was born the passion for freedom and justice that would change her life.

An all-A student whose dream of going to college is realized when she wins a basketball scholarship, she finally dares to join the NAACP in her junior year. Through the NAACP and later through CORE and SNCC she has first-hand experience of the demonstrations and sit-ins that were the mainstay of the civil rights movement, and the arrests and jailings, the shotguns, fire hoses, police dogs, billy clubs and deadly force that were used to destroy it.

A deeply personal story but also a portrait of a turning point in our nation's destiny, this autobiography lets us see history in the making, through the eyes of one of the footsoldiers in the civil rights movement.

"This memoir poses significant challenges for the narrator. She must capture the essence of the author from an unschooled 4-year-old to a polished adult writer. Lisa Reneé Pitts carries it off well.…This is a powerful book rendered all the more powerful by an intimate reading that makes the author and her words come alive." ---AudioFile

"Simply one of the best, Anne Moody's autobiography is an eloquent, moving testimonial to . . . Courage." ---Chicago Tribune

"A history of our time, seen from the bottom up, through the eyes of someone who decided for herself that things had to be changed . . . a timely reminder that we cannot now relax." ---Sentator Edward Kennedy, The New York Times Book Review

"Engrossing, sensitive, beautiful . . . so candid, so honest, and so touching, as to make it virtually impossible to put down." ---San Francisco Sun-Reporter

"There is ice-water clarity in Anne Moody's 1968 memoir of growing up in Mississippi." ---Chicago Tribune Audio Review

AudioFile Earphones Award Winner

Audie Finalist