Have We Experienced Progress? “I really WONDER”

Anne Moody ends Coming of Age in Mississippi on 1964 as she and a group of activists head to Washington D.C. to participate in a hearing about the Council of Federated Organization’s (COFO) work in Mississippi to register African Americans to vote. By this point, as Moody puts it, she had experienced both personal and national violence: “the Taplin burning, the Birmingham Church bombing, Medgar Evers’ murder, the blood gushing out of McKinley’s head, and all the other murders.” As the bus drives away, Gene asks her, “Moody, we’re gonna get things straight in Washington, huh?”

Moody doesn’t answer him. Instead, she sits in her seat and thinks to herself, “I wonder. I wonder.” With freedom songs ringing her ears, she writes the refrain of “We Shall Overcome” before ending her memoir by emphasizing her thoughts. She writes, “I WONDER. I really WONDER.” Moody’s final words, coming on the precipice of the Civil Rights Act in July 1964 and the Voting Rights Act on 1965 echo through the decades. Moody published her memoir in 1968, the year of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s and Robert F. Kennedy’s assassinations, the year of protests at the Democratic National Convention, and uprisings. Moody lived through the movement, becoming an activist after hearing about Emmett Till’s murder, participating in sit ins in Jackson while a student at Tougaloo College, working in Mississippi…