Coming of Age in Mississippi: Chapter 21 Summary & Analysis

Anne’s first involvement with the NAACP is a demonstration in Jackson, Mississippi, featuring a speech by Medgar Evers, a prominent civil rights activist. Dave Jones is interviewed on television, and many of the female students express more interest in joining the organization. Many of the demonstrators are arrested. Their fellow NAACP members bail them out, and the celebration turns into a freedom rally.

Eventually, Anne’s dedicated involvement with the NAACP causes her grades to grades suffer. She is also running out of money, and she writes Mama asking for help. But Raymond forbids her to help Anne, and Anne eventually gets some money from Emma instead. Mama tells Anne that she should not have gone to Tougaloo if she knew she couldn’t afford it. Anne gets a partial scholarship for summer school. At this point, Anne, feeling discouraged, begins to see Dave again.

Over the summer, Anne meets a white student named Joan Trumpauer, who is a secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Anne frequently works with Joan and volunteers to canvass in the Mississippi Delta, a region in the northwest section of the state, for their voting drive. In the Delta, Anne stays at Freedom House, a living space for civil rights activists, and meets her fellow activists Bettye Poole and Carolyn Quinn. All 18 people in the house, boys and girls, stay in the same room because it is the most protected from any possible attacks. While in the Delta, Anne also meets Bob Moses, the director of the SNCC in Mississippi, who she thinks is “Jesus Christ in the flesh.” Seeing the SNCC workers fight for the cause without discouragement and make the most of their lacking financial and living situations deeply inspires Anne.

Despite the SNCC members’ dedication to their cause, their efforts to register Black voters are largely unsuccessful. Most Black residents of the Delta are afraid to attend SNCC rallies. To try to reach more people, the SNCC workers speak in churches. However, ministers soon start asking the SNCC members not to come because their presence caused congregation members to stay away out of fear of white retaliation. The SNCC gets Northern college campuses to send food, clothing, and money, and, though many people do not register to vote and some even lose their jobs for attending rallies, the Black Delta residents know that the SNCC wants to help them.

One day, on their way back to Tougaloo, Anne and her friend Rose decide to sit in the white side of the bus station. Seeing Anne and Rose, a Black woman also sits there with her children, though she leaves after a drunk white man begins harassing the group. Anne and Rose miss the bus, and the drunk man continues to harass and threaten them. Other white people join him, including a bus driver, who begins to do racist impersonations of Black people. After missing another bus, Rose and Anne leave, and the crowd of white people follows them. eventually, a Black man finds them and drives them back to Tougaloo. He warns them not to try to stage a sit-in without support from a civil rights organization.