ted at the time. She knew she would go to jail for this but she did it anyway. A white mob formed around her and her friends and threw things at them and smeared food on them. Later, Moody joined CORE and continued to fight for voting rights until she ended up on the KKK black list until she fled the south to testify in Washington. I found this book to be an excellent view through which to examine a variety of issues in recent US History. She used the voice of a writer to tell a story of the history. I had read about various aspects of the civil rights movement, but to read it in reference to someone's real life who experienced it was completed different. I admired Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a leader and often never really understood those who differed from his idea of the non-violent protests. Anne Moody lived through and touched upon various historical events, including Brown v. Board of Education and the doctrine of separate but equal. She knew that there would never be any equality in the south as long as things remained separate. She was part of the 1960 lunch counter sit-ins, the Freedom Rides of 1961, the church bombing of Birmingham, Alabama where four little girls died and the March on Washington lead by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. himself. This book has been recognized as a very realistic portrayal of life in the South for blacks in the 1950's and 1960's. Civil rights activists were fighting for one of many civil rights that had long been denied to blacks in this country, rights that I, as a "minority" can enjoy today. Social customs that separated the races in every aspect of daily life were put into laws, from segregated movie theaters, lunch counters and schools. It was the Southern atmosphere of legal oppression that led to commonplace white violence against blacks. Mississippi whites believed so much in the segregated way of life in the south, they would kill to preserve it.Moody's youthful idealism embr...
