Coming of Age in Mississippi

Anne, excited about the NAACP convention in Jackson, invites Mama to attend. But Mama refuses, and she forbids Anne to go to the convention. She explains that the Centreville sheriff knows about Anne’s work with the NAACP. Anne recalls the last time that she was home, when Mama did all she could to keep her in the house. She realizes how dangerous it is for her family in Centreville. Jackie Robinson moderates the convention and Anne appreciates what Black representation in baseball has done for the men of her community. She is ecstatic at the Black celebrities there and gets autographs from all of them.

Though Anne plans to graduate in the spring of 1963, she is still waiting on her credits from Natchez to go through. However, she is glad to have an excuse to stay on campus over the summer and work with the Movement. She reflects that, as she has gotten further involved with the Movement, she doesn’t feel the need to “prove anything” the way she used to: “I had found something outside myself that gave meaning to my life.”

John Salter, Anne’s professor and a campus NAACP leader, plans a sit-in at Woolworth’s lunch counter in Jackson. Anne, who has “nothing left to lose,” agrees to be the spokesman for herself and the two other demonstrators, her classmates Memphis and Pearlena. When the three students sit at the segregated lunch counter and refuse to move, the waitresses run to the back of the store, fearing that violence will ensue. The white patrons harass the demonstrators with racist slogans and eventually physically attack them. Joan Trumpauer and John Salter join the sit-in, and the white patrons continue to attack the demonstrators, hitting them and covering them with ketchup, mustard, and anything else they can find. The beating goes on for over three hours until the president of Tougaloo, Dr. Biettel, escorts the demonstrators out of Woolworth’s. Reverend Ed King, a white Tougaloo staff member, drives them back to campus.

Anne sits in the NAACP office reflecting on the “incurable disease” that the whites have. She writes, that, before the sit-in, she hated the white people of Mississippi. Now, after the sit-in, she sees the racism of white people as “sickness,” and reflects that it is impossible to hate this illness. Before returning to campus, Anne goes to a salon to get her hair washed. The hairdresser, knowing that Anne was in the sit-in, washes her hair and treats her especially well.

That night, Anne attends a rally where Medgar Evers asks the attendees to “unite in a massive offensive against segregation.” After the rally, Anne feels hopeful that the Black community will band together. Anne is angry with Mama for not understanding her choice to be active in the civil rights movement, but also fears for the safety of her family, knowing that she is the only person from Centreville taking an active role in the Movement.

Demonstrations pick up after the sit-in. A group of ministers goes to Mayor Thompson of Jackson to present him with their demands, which mostly focus on integration and better job opportunities for Black people. Though the mayor tells the group in private that he will meet their demands, he later publicly denies this. Demonstrations continue, and many people are arrested. Anne teaches self-defense workshops to demonstrators. One day, Anne is arrested with a group of protestors doing a pray-in at the post office. Given the choice to disperse and face the group of violent surrounding white people or go to jail with the police, they choose jail. The authorities put Anne and her friend Doris Erskine in jail with some of their friends, and the group makes the most of the situation.

Anne and Doris get out of jail a few days later, and they learn that the 400 high schoolers who were arrested at a pray-in are being held in an “open compound” with dismal health and safety conditions. Anne writes that the descriptions of the scene of the arrest sounded like Nazi Germany. Anne plans to get arrested and be taken to the compound, but the police take her to the jail instead.

After getting out of jail, Anne gets a letter from Mama telling her that the sheriff came by asking questions about Anne’s activities. Mama tells her to never come back to Centreville. She also gets a letter from Adline, telling her that Junior was nearly lynched by a group of white boys and that her old Uncle Buck was beaten by a group of white men. Anne’s family is angry with her for getting involved in the movement. They fear that she will bring her activism to Centreville. However, Anne knows that no organization will go to her home of Wilkinson County because it is too dangerous.

Demonstrations continue as Jackson becomes “the hotbed of racial demonstrations in the South.” Black demonstrators, including NAACP director Roy Wilkins and Medgar Evers, are constantly being arrested, and the city makes plans to expand prison facilities. On Tuesday, June 11, Evers is shot and killed in his driveway. Anne tries to help organize a march with the students at Jackson State (an "Uncle Tom school”), but she is disgusted by the students’ apathy.

Anne intends to go back to jail, “the only place [she] could think in.” However, once in custody, the police take Anne and the other protestors to the fairgrounds. Upon arrival, the police leave the protestors in a hot, crowded van with no air for two hours. When Anne and the others arrive at the compound, they meet detained high school students who tell them about the police violence the experienced. Once more, Anne compares the conditions of the compound with Nazi Germany.

After Anne’s release from the compound, she attends Evers’s funeral. Seeing the many Black people in attendance gives Anne hope for a united Movement. Eventually, the funeral turns into a protest march, which is met with police violence. The crowd retaliates by throwing bottles and stones at the police until John Doar, a Black man from the Justice Department, urges them to stop.

Upon Evers’s death, every civil rights organization in Jackson receives threats. The organizations disagree on a strategy going forward, with the Congress of Racial Equality CORE and the SNCC advocating for more militant protests and the NAACP advocating for an increased focus on voter registration. Soon after the media reports that there is a divide between the organizations, some of the organizations sever their ties with one another. Anne writes that “the whites had succeeded again” in dividing the Black community.

A few days after Evers’s funeral, Reverend Ed King organizes an integrated church-visiting team to sit-in at white churches, which Anne joins, to promote integration and solidarity. However, most churches do not let them in, having hired intimidating men posed as ushers to keep the group out. They try again the next week with more success and solidarity, as their visits the second week were not as publicized as their first. As Anne sits in the white church, she fears that at “any moment God would strike the life out of” her. As she recognizes some of the white people in the church from their violence at the protest, she reflects that “if they were praying to the same God I was […] then even God was against me.”