By Jo Freeman 

Mississippi’s Exiled Daughter: How My Civil Rights Baptism Under Fire Shaped My Life
Brenda Travis, written with John Obee
Published by New South Books, 2018, 160 pp

At age 17 Brenda Travis was banned from the state of Mississippi, or so she was told. Forced to leave family and friends behind because she got involved in the civil rights movement she spent most of her life someplace else, but always felt like an exile.

Brenda was just 16 in the summer of 1961 when the civil rights movement came to her hometown of McComb, MS, 80 miles south of Jackson and 110 miles north of New Orleans. She had just recently been appointed head of the youth council of the NAACP and was aching to do something. Bob Moses and other SNCC activists came to start a voter registration drive.

SNCC set up an office in the Masonic Temple where it trained volunteers and sent them out to canvass. They brought potential voters to classes on how to pass the registration test.

As more blacks showed up at the registration office, local officials realized something was going on. Retaliation began.

The high school students SNCC had recruited wanted to do more than canvass. Impressed by the highly publicized sit-ins in 1960 and the Freedom Rides in 1961, they wanted to do direct action.

Above, Brenda L. Travis, June 2, 1962 (Photographer unknown, Library of Congress, Washington D.C. [LC-USZ62-135777])

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