Contemporary Relevance of Anne Moody and Imprisoned Intellectual Thought: Anti-Critical Race Theory Ban, Black Women, and the Politics of Structural Denial

Mississippi’s anti-critical race theory (CRT) law enacted in 2022 illustrates the continuity of structural racism, anti-blackness, and political abandonment that sees Black communities/people as deserving of punishment and regards Black literature as contraband. Glen Conley, an imprisoned citizen, examines and teaches Anne Moody, a foot soldier in the Civil Rights Movement, within a Mississippi prison context. Anne Moody’s 1968 memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi, chronicles her life growing up in the Deep South during the 1940s and 1950s. Her book is used across several academic disciplines. However, the study of Moody within the prison context is not well known. Conley’s pedagogical approach and scholarly contributions explore Moody’s life and seminal text, bringing renewed attention to themes of Black mental health, survival, and resistance under a harsh Southern regime. This paper argues that Moody’s voice is of increased importance in a political climate where we are witnessing more overt forms of legislated anti-Blackness and systemic erasure. Drawing on Lewis Gordon’s conceptualization of anti-Blackness, this paper extends the theorization of the simultaneous operation of the politics of invisibility and hypervisibility that marks Black life. Such interplay is evidenced by the hyper-policing and punishment of Black women, girls, and trans women witnessed today.