Coming of Age in Mississippi

by Anne Moody

  The next morning I woke up to the sounds of someone banging on a skillet and hollering, “Come and get it! Come and get it!” When we walked in the kitchen, the boy who’d made the racket said, “All right, girls, take over. Us boys have been cooking all week.” Most of the guys were angry because he had gotten them up in that manner, but they didn’t make a big fuss over it. Carolyn and I started cooking. When we announced that the food was ready, the boys ran over each other to get to the kitchen. It seemed they thought the food would disappear. It did. Within five minutes, everything on the table was gone. The food ran out and three boys were left standing in line.

  I really got to like all of the SNCC workers. I had never known people so willing and determined to help others. I thought Bob Moses, the director of SNCC in Mississippi, was Jesus Christ in the flesh. A lot of other people thought of him as J.C., too.

  The SNCC workers who were employed full-time were paid only ten dollars a week. They could do more with that ten dollars than most people I knew could do with fifty. Sometimes when we were in the Delta, the boys would take us out. We did not finish with our work some Saturdays until ten or eleven, and all the Negro places had a twelve o’clock curfew. But we would have more fun in an hour than most people could have in twenty-four. We would often go to one place where the boys had made friends with the waitresses, and they would sneak us fifths of liquor. Those SNCC boys had friends everywhere, among the Negroes, that is. Most whites were just waiting for the chance to kill them all off.

  I guess mostly the SNCC workers were just lucky. Most of them had missed a bullet by an inch or so on many occasions. Threats didn’t stop them. They just kept going all the time. One Saturday we got to Greenville and discovered that the office had been bombed Friday night. The office was located up two flights of outside steps in a little broken-down building. It seemed as though a real hard wind would have blown it away. The bomb knocked the steps off, but that didn’t stop the rally on Saturday night. Some of the boys made steps. When the new steps began to collapse, we ended up using a ladder. I remember when the rally ended, we found that the ladder was gone. For a few minutes we were real scared. We just knew some whites had moved it. We were all standing up there in the doorway wondering what to do. There was only one exit, and it was too high up to jump from. We figured we were going to be blown up. It seemed as though the whites had finally trapped us. The high school students were about to panic, when suddenly one of the SNCC boys came walking up with the ladder and yelled up to ask if the excitement was over. A lot of the other guys were mad enough to hit him. Those that did only tapped him lightly and smiled as they did it. “The nerve of those guys!” I thought.

  Things didn’t seem to be coming along too well in the Delta. On Saturdays we would spend all day canvassing and often at night we would have mass rallies. But these were usually poorly attended. Many Negroes were afraid to come. In the beginning some were even afraid to talk to us. Most of these old plantation Negroes had been brain-washed so by the whites, they really thought that only whites were supposed to vote. There were even a few who had never heard of voting. The only thing most of them knew was how to handle a hoe. For years they had demonstrated how well they could do that. Some of them had calluses on their hands so thick they would hide them if they noticed you looking at them.

  On Sundays we usually went to Negro churches to speak. We were split into groups according to our religious affiliation. We were supposed to know how to reach those with the same faith as ourselves. In church we hoped to be able to reach many more Negroes. We knew that even those that slammed doors in our faces or said, “I don’t want no part of voting” would be there. There would also be the schoolteachers and the middle-class professional Negroes who dared not participate. They knew that once they did, they would lose that $250 a month job. But the people started getting wise to us. Most of them stopped coming to church. They knew if they came, they would have to face us. Then the ministers started asking us not to come because we scared their congregations away. SNCC had to come up with a new strategy.

  As the work continued that summer, people began to come around. I guess they saw that our intentions were good. But some began getting fired from their jobs, thrown off plantations and left homeless. They could often find somewhere else to stay, but food and clothing became a problem. SNCC started to send representatives to Northern college campuses. They went begging for food, clothing, and money for the people in Mississippi, and the food, clothing, and money started coming in. The Delta Negroes still didn’t understand the voting, but they knew they had found friends, friends they could trust.

  That summer I could feel myself beginning to change. For the first time I began to think something would be done about whites killing, beating, and misusing Negroes. I knew I was going to be a part of whatever happened.

  A week before summer school ended, I was in town shopping with Rose, a girl from the dorm. We had planned to split cab fare back to campus, but discovered we did not have enough money. Cab fare out to Tougaloo was $2.50 and bus fare was thirty-five cents one way. We decided to take the Trailways back. When we got to the station, I suggested to Rose that we use the white side. “I’m game if you are,” she said.

  I walked in the white entrance. When I looked back, I saw that Rose had not followed. I decided I would not go back to see what had happened, because she would try and talk me out of it. As I was buying my ticket, she walked up behind me.

  “Shit, Moody, I thought you were kidding,” she said.

  I didn’t answer. I was noticing the reaction of the man behind the counter. He stood looking at me as if he were paralyzed.

  “Make that two tickets, please,” I said to him.

  “Where is the other one to?” he said.

  “Both to Tougaloo,” I said.

  As he was getting the tickets for us, another man had gotten on the phone. He kept looking at us as he was talking. I think he was reporting to the police what was taking place. The man that sold us the tickets acted as if that was the last thing in the world he wanted to do. He slapped the tickets down on the counter, and threw the change at me. The change fell off the counter and rolled over to the floor. That bastard had the nerve to laugh as we picked it up. Rose and I sat opposite each other, so we could see what was happening throughout the terminal. The bus was to leave at three-thirty, and we had gotten there about two-forty-five. We had some time to wait. Rose had a watch. I asked her to keep a check on the time.

  People came in and stared. Some even laughed. Nothing happened until a bunch of white soldiers sat with us and started talking. The conversation had gone on for some time when a Negro woman got off one of the incoming buses. She saw us sitting in there and walked right in. She had about six small children with her. The little Negro children started running around the station picking up things from the counter and asking if they could buy them. At that point the excitement started. A drunken white man walked into the station behind the Negro lady with all the children. He started cursing, calling us all kinds of niggers.

  “Get them little dirty swines outta heah,” he said, pulling one of the little boys to the door.

  “Take your filthy hands off my child,” the Negro woman said. “What’s going on here anyway?”

  “They got a place for you folks, now why don’t you take them chilluns of yours and go on right over there?” the drunkard said, pointing to the Negro side of the bus station.

  The lady looked at us. I guess she wanted us to say something. Rose and I just sat there. Finally she realized a sit-in or something was going on. She took her children and hurried out of the door. Instead of going to the Negro side, she went back on the bus. She looked as though she was really angry with us.

  After that the drunkard started yelling at us. I didn’t get too scared, but Rose was now shaking. She had begun to smoke cigarettes one after the other. She looked at her watch. “Moody, we have missed the bus,” she said.

  “What time is it?” I asked.r />
  “It’s almost four-thirty.”

  “They didn’t even announce that the bus was loading,” I said.

  I walked over to the man at the ticket counter. “Has the bus come in that’s going to Tougaloo?” I asked him.

  “One just left,” he said.

  “You didn’t announce that the bus was in.”

  “Are you telling me how to do my job?” he said. “I hear you niggers at Tougaloo think you run Mississippi.”

  “When is the next bus?” I asked.

  “Five-thirty,” he said, very indignant.

  I went back and told Rose that the next bus left at five-thirty. She wanted to leave, but I insisted that we stay. Just as I was trying to explain to her why we should not leave, the white drunk walked up behind her. He had what appeared to be a wine bottle in his hand.

  “Talk to me, Rose,” I said.

  “What’s going on?” Rose said, almost shouting.

  “Nothing. Stop acting so damn scared and start talking,” I said.

  The drunk walked up behind her and held the bottle up as though he was going to hit her on the head. All the time, I was looking him straight in the face as if to say, “Would you, would you really hit her?” Rose knew someone was behind her. She wouldn’t have been able to talk or act normal if someone in the station threatened to shoot her if she didn’t. The drunkard saw that I was pleading with him. He cursed me, throwing the bottle on the floor and breaking it. At this point, more people got all rallied up. They had now started shouting catcalls from every direction. Some bus drivers walked into the station. “What’s wrong? What’s going on heah?” one of them shouted. One took a chair and sat right in front of us. “Do you girls want to see a show?” he said. “Did you come here for a little entertainment?”

  We didn’t say anything.

  “I guess you didn’t. I’ll put it on anyhow,” he said. “Now here’s how white folks entertain,” putting his thumbs in his ears and wiggling his fingers, kicking his feet and making all kind of facial expressions. The rest of the whites in the bus station laughed and laughed at him. Some asked him to imitate a monkey, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers. His performance went on for what seemed to be a good thirty minutes. When he finished, or rather got tired of, clowning, he said, “Now some of you other people give them what they really came for.”

  All this time the man was still on the phone talking to someone. We were sure he was talking to the police. Some of the other people that were sitting around in the bus station starting shouting remarks. I guess they were taking the advice of the bus driver. Again Rose looked at her watch to report that we had missed the second bus. It was almost a quarter to seven.

  We didn’t know what to do. The place was getting more tense by the minute. People had now begun to crowd around us.

  “Let’s go, Moody,” Rose began to plead with me. “If you don’t I’ll leave you here,” she said.

  I knew she meant it, and I didn’t want to be left alone. The crowd was going to get violent any minute now.

  “O.K., Rose, let’s go,” I said. “Don’t turn your back to anyone, though.”

  We got up and walked backward to the door. The crowd followed us just three or four feet away. Some were threatening to kick us out—or throw us all the way to Tougaloo, and a lot of other possible and impossible things.

  Rose and I hit the swinging doors with our backs at the same time. The doors closed immediately behind us. We were now outside the station not knowing what to do or where to run. We were afraid to leave. We were at the back of the station and thought the mob would be waiting for us if we ran around in front and tried to leave. Any moment now, those that had followed us would be on us again. We were standing there just going to pieces.

  “Get in this here car,” a Negro voice said.

  I glanced to one side and saw that Rose was getting into the back seat. At that moment the mob was coming toward me through the doors. I just started moving backward until I fell into the car. The driver sped away.

  After we had gotten blocks away from the station, I was still looking out of the back window to see who would follow. No one had. For the first time I looked to see who was driving the car and asked the driver who he was. He said he was a minister, that he worked at the bus station part-time. He asked us not to ever try and sit-in again without first planning it with an organization.

  “You girls just can’t go around doing things on your own,” he said. He drove us all the way to campus, then made us feel bad by telling us he probably would get fired. He said he was on a thirty-minute break. That’s a Negro preacher for you.

  Summer school ended the following week. I headed for New Orleans to get that good three weeks of work in before the fall term of my senior year began.

  Part Four

  THE MOVEMENT

  Chapter

  TWENTY-TWO

  In mid-September I was back on campus. But didn’t very much happen until February when the NAACP held its annual convention in Jackson. They were having a whole lot of interesting speakers: Jackie Robinson, Floyd Patterson, Curt Flood, Margaretta Belafonte, and many others. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. I was so excited that I sent one of the leaflets home to Mama and asked her to come.

  Three days later I got a letter from Mama with dried-up tears on it, forbidding me to go to the convention. It went on for more than six pages. She said if I didn’t stop that shit she would come to Tougaloo and kill me herself. She told me about the time I last visited her, on Thanksgiving, and she had picked me up at the bus station. She said she picked me up because she was scared some white in my hometown would try to do something to me. She said the sheriff had been by, telling her I was messing around with that NAACP group. She said he told her if I didn’t stop it, I could not come back there anymore. He said that they didn’t need any of those NAACP people messing around in Centreville. She ended the letter by saying that she had burned the leaflet I sent her. “Please don’t send any more of that stuff here. I don’t want nothing to happen to us here,” she said. “If you keep that up, you will never be able to come home again.”

  I was so damn mad after her letter, I felt like taking the NAACP convention to Centreville. I think I would have, if it had been in my power to do so. The remainder of the week I thought of nothing except going to the convention. I didn’t know exactly what to do about it. I didn’t want Mama or anyone at home to get hurt because of me.

  I had felt something was wrong when I was home. During the four days I was there, Mama had tried to do everything she could to keep me in the house. When I said I was going to see some of my old classmates, she pretended she was sick and said I would have to cook. I knew she was acting strangely, but I hadn’t known why. I thought Mama just wanted me to spend most of my time with her, since this was only the second time I had been home since I entered college as a freshman.

  Things kept running through my mind after that letter from Mama. My mind was so active, I couldn’t sleep at night. I remembered the one time I did leave the house to go to the post office. I had walked past a bunch of white men on the street on my way through town and one said, “Is that the gal goin’ to Tougaloo?” He acted kind of mad or something, and I didn’t know what was going on. I got a creepy feeling, so I hurried home. When I told Mama about it, she just said, “A lotta people don’t like that school.” I knew what she meant. Just before I went to Tougaloo, they had housed the Freedom Riders there. The school was being criticized by whites throughout the state.

  The night before the convention started, I made up my mind to go, no matter what Mama said. I just wouldn’t tell Mama or anyone from home. Then it occurred to me—how did the sheriff or anyone at home know I was working with the NAACP chapter on campus? Somehow they had found out. Now I knew I could never go to Centreville safely again. I kept telling myself that I didn’t really care too much about going home, that it was more important to me to go to the convention.

  I was there from the very begi
nning. Jackie Robinson was asked to serve as moderator. This was the first time I had seen him in person. I remembered how when Jackie became the first Negro to play Major League baseball, my uncles and most of the Negro boys in my hometown started organizing baseball leagues. It did something for them to see a Negro out there playing with all those white players. Jackie was a good moderator, I thought. He kept smiling and joking. People felt relaxed and proud. They appreciated knowing and meeting people of their own race who had done something worth talking about.

  When Jackie introduced Floyd Patterson, heavyweight champion of the world, the people applauded for a long, long time. Floyd was kind of shy. He didn’t say very much. He didn’t have to, just his being there was enough to satisfy most of the Negroes who had only seen him on TV. Archie Moore was there too. He wasn’t as smooth as Jackie, but he had his way with a crowd. He started telling how he was run out of Mississippi, and the people just cracked up.

  I was enjoying the convention so much that I went back for the night session. Before the night was over, I had gotten autographs from every one of the Negro celebrities.

  I had counted on graduating in the spring of 1963, but as it turned out, I couldn’t because some of my credits still had to be cleared with Natchez College. A year before, this would have seemed like a terrible disaster, but now I hardly even felt disappointed. I had a good excuse to stay on campus for the summer and work with the Movement, and this was what I really wanted to do. I couldn’t go home again anyway, and I couldn’t go to New Orleans—I didn’t have money enough for bus fare.

  During my senior year at Tougaloo, my family hadn’t sent me one penny. I had only the small amount of money I had earned at Maple Hill. I couldn’t afford to eat at school or live in the dorms, so I had gotten permission to move off campus. I had to prove that I could finish school, even if I had to go hungry every day. I knew Raymond and Miss Pearl were just waiting to see me drop out. But something happened to me as I got more and more involved in the Movement. It no longer seemed important to prove anything. I had found something outside myself that gave meaning to my life.