Coming of Age in Mississippi- Anne Moody

As if growing up wasn't turbulent enough, Anne Moody grew up during a crucial time in American History. It was during this time that race and civil rights took center stage in her home state of Mississippi. Young women face many physical and emotional changes during their teenage years, regardless of when and where they grew up. However, for Anne Moody, and other young black women, there was the instability in race relations to deal with as well.

In contrast, the grandmother states that the blacks did not have things like the whites do (p.2118), putting the blacks down infront of her grandchildren, associating the blacks with poverty. We see how the grandmother fails to treat the blacks equally as human, solely because of their social status, as she perceives them merely as an inanimate object - a picture.

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

Anne Moody faced many issues in her lifetime because she experienced racism her whole life. Moody spent her whole life trying to figure out why white people hated her people so much and as she got older, she wanted answers. Many struggles contributed to Moody’s upbringing such as a troubled family, working at a young age, and her high school and college years.

I feel that Anne Moody story is a blunt open description of how hard live was for Blacks.

     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

The first main event that I believe led to Anne Moody becoming an activist for Civil Rights was when she was younger, her cousin George Lee was babysitting and he burned down the house in a fit of rage and when Daddy gets home he blames it on Essie Mae (Anne Moody). This foreshadows all of life’s injustices that will be thrown her way. The next time was when she made friends with white neighbors and they decided to go to the movies, Anne couldn’t sit with her friends, she had to sit in the balcony with all of the other blacks. She did not understand why it was this way. Another event was when she was in high school, she changes her name to Anne Moody, and a white boy, whose name was Emmitt Till who was visiting from Chicago, whistled at a

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.

It was a violent sentiment, but Moody, more than half a century later, would have approved. She, too, faced a powerful establishment, and as it grew more violent, Moody grew more hateful of white people. She hated them because they hated black people.

Through these organizations, Anne had become actively involved in the civil rights movement. She soon realized, though, that there were a lot of preconditions that were needed to achieve significant social change in the black community. Many of the projects Anne worked on, lacked support from the black community. She did not realize how much she would be harassed by the white people because she was fighting the rights of black people. The main preconditions for social change in the 1950s and 1960s, was getting the black community to support the various projects SNCC and the NAACP were working on. The black people they were fighting for did not always like the projects that Anne, and the other young people in SNCC, had been doing. Many black people tended to ignore the efforts of the SNCC because they were afraid of change. It took a lot of work to convince the black community to support the various projects the young people of SNCC were doing. An example of a project that the black community supported extensively, was Freedom Summer. This project would not have been successful if the black community did not support this. The Freedom Summer project proved to be a success because the black community went out and voted. This proved to the federal government, that black people were interested in gaining voting rights. Anne Moody had thought about joining the National Association for the

She also expressed frustration over the brutalities that White dominance forced Blacks to impose on one another, and frustration with the treatment of Blacks at the hands of Whites and their reaction to Blackness. She criticizes Blacks for being complacent and silent like nothing happens when what is taking place is a grave threat to the livelihood of the Black community. These emotions were tied to the stronghold that she felt was placed on Blacks by the racist white society. She felt that she was caught in between two very different world; one, where she was too intelligent for her indifferent Black community and another where she was too self-sufficient but also too dark-skinned to be accepted by most in the White community. Anne also observes how her mother has internalized Black's status as an inferior people as she urges Anne not to get "high-minded" ideas as a result of her spending time with Whites, such as the

Also, Hansberry discusses the hardships of a black family in a while society. She argues that life of a colored person is unfair and unacceptable on many different levels. A life without equality where black people where treated as inferior citizens. When the while supremacy ruled over everything, colored people packed up and left or delt with the improper treatment from the higher class white folks.

The novel, Coming to Ages in Mississippi traces the lives of an African American family, their various experiences, struggles, and contrasts of ideas, as well as depicting the racial discrimination that characterized their environment. It then shows struggles by the black community in fighting for racial discrimination. It begins with a description of Anne’s family that consist of her mother, father, and younger sister. The family works in a plantation owned by a white man who does not extend amenities such as electricity and indoor plumbing to their quarters. Due to several grievances, Anne father leaves them to be with a lighter skinned woman, leaving them with a fifth member of the family, a new son. Anne’s mother relocates with her family severally working as either a waitress or a maid in white people’s home to provide or her family. The family is weighed by the lack of enough food and other necessities. Nevertheless, Anne performs well in school and soon starts working in white people 's homes to supplement her mother’s efforts. Some of her employers are good. They encourage her to continue with her education. They also treat her as an equal, sometimes they invite her to eat at the same table with them. Not all of her employers are nice, some bullied her and even tortured her.

In “Coming to age in Mississippi” Moody describes her life from childhood into Womanhood in rural Mississippi. Her autobiography provides incite into the atrocities committed in the south due to racism and prejudice. Moody illustrates how the economic, and social injustices of the 1940s and 50s plagued her childhood. Inspiring her to make a change as a leading advocate during the Civil Rights Movement.

When Anne was a little girl, she didn’t understand the difference of skin color white people held over African Americans. After school, Anne would teach the white children how to sound and dance like Indians while the white children showed her how to ride bikes and skate. “Up until that time, I had never really thought about it. After all, we were playing together. I knew that we were going to separate schools and all, but I never knew why,”(38). I love how curious children get and when Anne was a child, she began to wonder what truly made them different. She noticed their hair and skin were different.