Historians and Ethics: Finding Anne Moody

Abstract

Anne Moody is best known for her 1968 autobiography, Coming of Age in Mississippi, which documented her first twenty-two years growing up in the Magnolia State, and her activism as part of the mass movement for civil rights before she fled the South. While the book was an instant success, assigned for decades in schools, colleges, and universities, we know little about Moody’s life thereafter. This essay tackles some of that history, and delves into the ethics of finding someone who did not want to be found and left nothing for researchers—yet a few legally obtained boxes containing sensitive personal information that highlighted trauma and mental illness became available for a couple of years in a university archive. The essay discusses some of the ethical issues historians must navigate as they follow research leads, and implicitly underscores the importance of personal and professional integrity in the method and product historians utilize and create.