Anne Moody’s autobiography, Coming of Age in Mississippi, depicts the various stages of her life from childhood, to high school, then to college, and ends with her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. In the novel, Anne tells the reader her story through events, conversations, and emotional struggles. The reader can interpret various elements of cultural knowledge that Anne Moody learned from her family and community as a child. Her understanding of the culture and race relations of the time period was shaped by many forces. Anne Moody’s family, community, education, interactions with various races, and her experiences outside of her hometown, shaped her into a devout activist for equal rights. As a child, the most important …show more content…
Another force that shaped Moody’s thoughts on race was her interactions with the whites that she worked for within her hometown. This started her questioning of why there was such an emphasis on race. Anne’s job description consisted of cooking, cleaning, ironing, and maintaining houses for whites in her community. With each family Moody worked for, the anger within her grew and the prejudice toward her also grew. Moody expresses how much she desperately wanted to understand the racial inequality that was a part of her world. Some of the kind whites educated her, while others tried to engrain in her mind that she should not try to step out of her role as an African American. One of the rude white families that she worked for was the Burkes. Mrs. Burke, an active member in a local Citizens’ Council and a character that was prejudice towards blacks, had many encounters with Anne. Anne’s interactions with Mrs. Burke make her question the societal norms between whites and blacks. Mrs. Burke tells Anne how to behave and all Anne can do is act as if she understands and agrees with what Mrs. Burke says, but inside, all she can do is question why society is like this. For example, one interaction went like this: “When they had finished and gone to the living room as usual to watch TV, Mrs. Burke called me to eat…Mrs. Burke
In the book Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody, it shows about a Moody growing up in Mississippi poor and in the during Civil Rights era. Throughout the book it shows the experiences that Moody went through growing up and how they affected her views on the Civil Rights movements. First, during her childhood the experiences of growing up as an African-Americans in the southern limited Moody to what she can achieve in life. Then in the teenager years of Moody life the experiences are more against the hatred the white people had against the black community, also in her 20s her past experiences helped her get involved with Civil Rights programs. Finally, with her involvement in the Civil Rights movements affected her way see different views and resolves compared to other people. In the book, Moody’s experiences throughout her life affects her views and resolves during the Civil Rights movements and her involvement in the movement.
In her award winning autobiography, Anne Moody establishes herself as a prominent Civil Rights Activist, allowing her audience to view the various perspectives and ideologies of the African Americans she lived around and attempted to recruit. Although the Civil Rights movement had countless notable figures and activists, most African Americans were, according to Moody’s own perspective, scared or opposed to change a Jim Crow lead, segregated United States. Even though many, such as Anne, had a much more “motivated” ideology toward the Civil Rights movement, most African Americans that fit this majority were terrified of being abused by police during protests and sit-ins, losing their jobs or lives, being incarcerated, fear of being expelled from their school, while other African Americans were religious, meaning that their suffering is all a plan of God.
During the post-reconstruction era from 1877 to the mid-1960s, primarily southern and border states operated under a racial caste system referred to as Jim Crow. Not only did Jim Crow refer to anti-Black laws and restrictions such as Black codes and poll taxes; it was a way of life dominated by widely accepted societal rules that relegated Black people to the role of second class citizens. In the autobiography of Anne Moody entitled Coming of Age in Mississippi, Moody describes growing up as a poor Black woman in the rural south and eventually getting heavily involved with the Civil Right Movement during her college years. The detailing of her experiences expressed not only the injustices inflicted on Black people as a monolith by the Jim
The autobiography Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody is the story of her life as a poor black girl growing into adulthood. Moody chose to start at the beginning - when she was four-years-old, the child of poor sharecroppers working for a white farmer. She overcomes obstacles such as discrimination and hunger as she struggles to survive childhood in one of the most racially discriminated states in America. In telling the story of her life, Moody shows why the civil rights movement was such a necessity and the depth of the injustices it had to correct. Moody's autobiography depicts the battle all southern African Americans faced. She had a personal mission throughout the entire
Coming of Age in Mississippi is an autobiography by Anne Moody. It is the story of a black girl growing up in Mississippi at a time when racial discrimination was taken for granted and the NAACP movement had no formal name. In her autobiography, Anne Moody displays the hardships of living in the "rural south" while the Negroes were just starting their fight for equality. Her story is amazing. Life was difficult for all poor Southerners. But for a poor black family with little hope and living with the constant threat of harm and loss of life, her optimism is awe-inspiring. I found this book to be very moving and easy to read, though the structure of her writing was very distracting.
Anne Moody's Coming of Age in Mississippi is a narrated autobiography depicting what it was like to grow up in the South as a poor African American female. Her autobiography takes us through her life journey beginning with her at the age of four all the way through to her adult years and her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. The book is divided into four periods: Childhood, High School, College and The Movement. Each of these periods represents the process by which she "came of age" with each stage and its experiences having an effect on her enlightenment. She illustrates how important the Civil Rights Movement was by detailing the economic, social, and racial injustices against African Americans she experienced.
In the 1940’s and the 1950’s, America was going through a world war and several difficulties that included problems in civil and woman rights on the home-front. In two different nonfiction memoirs by female authors, we see different yet similarities in the novels. Nisei Daughter by Monica Sone is a memoir by a Japanese-American woman, in which she describes her childhood, adolescence, and young womanhood while growing up in a Japanese immigrant family in Seattle, Washington in the 1930 's. In the second narrative, Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody is a memoir by an African-American woman whom writes about her childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood life and growing up in her home state during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950’s. Moody and Sone had childhoods that lacked positive influences in certain areas and tell their stories to help others in understanding the issues that surrounded them as being minority women in a society that don’t accept them.
Coming of Age in Mississippi is the amazing story of Anne Moody's unbreakable spirit and character throughout the first twenty-three years of her life. Time and time again she speaks of unthinkable odds and conditions and how she manages to keep excelling in her aspirations, yet she ends the book with a tone of hesitation, fear, and skepticism. While she continually fought the tide of society and her elders, suddenly in the end she is speaking as if it all may have been for not. It doesn?t take a literary genius nor a psychology major to figure out why. With all that was stacked against her cause, time and time again, it is easy to see why she would doubt the future of the civil rights
In the Jim Crow South, Anne Moody lived her life trying to overcome the challenges of living in a racist society. In her autobiography, Coming of Age in Mississippi, she details her intimate experiences as a young African American woman facing the challenges of growing up in the Jim Crow South during the mid-twentieth century. This autobiography is divided into four, chronological sections: childhood, high school, college, and the Movement. In the first section of the book, Moody recollects her life living in extreme poverty and battling racial distinctions at a young age.
Coming of Age in Mississippi is an autobiography of the famous Anne Moody. Moody grew up in mist of a Civil Rights Movement as a poor African American woman in rural Mississippi. Her story comprises of her trials and tribulations from life in the South during the rise of the Civil Rights movement. Life during this time embraced segregation, which made life for African Americans rough. As an African American woman growing up during the Civil Rights movement, Moody has a unique story on themes like work and racial consciousness present during this time.
Anne was curious about why murders, lynching and mysterious fires were taking place in and around her community. Every time she went to her mother for advice or discussion on race relations, she was immediately redirected to a subject less controversial. If Anne wanted to figure any of these issues out, she was going to have to do it on her own.
The most drastic incident that happened to Anne was when she was working in Canton, Mississippi for a cause of voter registration. People involved in the movement are dying left and right, and this becomes very discouraging to her. She finds out that she is on the KKK black list and fears for her life. She finds out that her family is also afraid and they stop talking to her. She quits her job and moves back to Canton and goes back to her family. She sees how complacent her family is and this frustrates her. Her family treated her like a stranger, and when she graduated from Tougaloo, no one showed up for her graduation. In the end of the book, McKinley is murdered in front of nonviolent civil rights activists. Anne Moody wonders if things will ever work out.
Anne was immediately confused by their presence because they seemed to be just like her except for skin color. On one occasion all the children were playing together in the lobby of a movie theater. Anne was with some local white children playing, but when it was time to enter the movie lobby the white children went in one direction and Anne went in after her friends. Her disapproving mother quickly stopped Anne and they left the theater. Before this instance Anne had never considered the coincidence that all the white children watched the movie from the bottom terrace and all the African America children from the top terrace. While thinking about the difference Anne realized that the bottom terrace and side entrance was much more luxurious than the raggedy top terrace, where she and her mother usually sat (38-2). After this the difference in skin color became much more apparent to her in everyday life. Anne was motivated to find the answers as to why she was treated differently because of the color of her skin.
Coming of Age in Mississippi is an eye-opening testimony to the racism that exemplified what it was like to be an African American living in the south before and after the civil rights movements in the 50's and 60's. African Americans had been given voting and citizen rights, but did not and to a certain degree, still can not enjoy these rights. The southern economy that Anne Moody was born into in the 40's was one that was governed and ruled by a bunch of whites, many of which who very prejudice. This caused for a very hard up bringing for a young African American girl. Coming of Age in Mississippi broadened horizon of what it was like for African Americans to live during the 40's, 50', and 60's.
Anne Moody was born in the 1940s which was the time after World War II. This was the period of the development of the U.S. However, the racism between Whites and Blacks still existed. As an African-American girl lived in that time, she had a life of poverty and misery. During her childhood, she had to face with many