How Did Anne Moody Influence The Civil Rights Movement

prevalent in the south during the pre Civil Rights period. Ms. Moody learns how badly White

     Moody was a very eager learner and constantly exceeded her classmates. She was an excellent student and though she far surpassed the performance of her white cousin, she was not considered to be equal, let alone superior. She did not let this affect her in any way. One word to describe Moody would be fighter, a fighter in what she believed to be fair and fighting to stand up for these beliefs. She always wanted to understand her surroundings and became very interested in the NAACP. Moody gets drawn into the fight for civil

Dreamers Instead of Leaders: Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi and Non-Violent vs. Violent Protest for Civil Rights

     Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi, talked extensively about the civil rights movement that she had participated in. The civil rights movement dealt with numerous issues that many people had not agreed with. Coming of Age in Mississippi gave the reader a first hand look at the efforts many people had done to gain equal rights.

Moody was the child of a colored family who worked for a white farmer. Her father decided to not be a part of the picture which left a family in a single mother’s hands. She attended segregated schools and was forced to start working since she was in the fourth grade in order to help support her family financially. Soon after, they moved closer to Centreville, Mississippi and her mother eventually married a man, whom Moody felt sexually harassed by. There were various different acts of violence and

Her entire time spent in Canton is met with little support, if not disgust, by whites as well as blacks. While the county is primarily black citizens, they still remain submissive to the white citizens in the area. This truly confuses and annoys Moody. She is looked upon with contempt by nearly all of the elder blacks, and can only seem to reach a small number of teenagers. This is when she privately realizes that if a change is to come, it has to come with the younger generations, not with the older. She again refers to the elder blacks as brainwashed and afraid to take what is theirs. The blacks in the county held nearly half the land, yet most were barely doing well enough to feed their families. She seems to initially think that the inferior thinking is only prominent in Centerville and Woodville, but when she realizes that this same mentality is present in Canton as well as all other parts of Mississippi, as well as New Orleans, this is only another nail in the coffin of her dream.

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

The abolishment of slavery in 1865 was only the beginning of a long, strenuous fight for African American citizens in the United States. The abolition may have freed the slaves physically but did not free them of the social injustices they had yet to endure. The African American civil rights movement took place in 1954 through 1968. (history.com) The civil rights movement is described as the struggle for social justice, a battle fought for blacks to be seen as equals under the laws of the United states. Many people were involved in progressing the movement including but not limited to Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr, Malcom X and Anne Moody. Throughout her lifetime Anne Moody has had a major impact on the African American Civil rights movement. Despite her personal struggles, Moody used her life to promote the enlightenment and progression of African American citizens. Moody’s perseverance, hatred, and alienation contributed to her educational and creative success as well as her contributions to the Civil Rights Movement in the novel, Coming of age in Mississippi.

As Moody grew up in the South, in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, she began to understand segregation on a larger context. Her work experiences tell us a lot about racial segregation and inequality. As work offered women new opportunities outside the house, it was different for African American women. They would work in trades least affected by mechanism, like domestic services, such as maids for white families. Moody and her mother both worked to help support the family and worked domestic service jobs. After Linda Mae moves away, Moody had to work somewhere to help support the family, so she worked for Mrs. Burke, even though she was very racist. Moody explains the reason she stuck with it and worked for Mrs. Burke, “I had to help secure that plate of beans” (Moody 116). Moody and African Americans a like, were working for more than just making

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.

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.

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.

Within this agency of career opportunity provided to black women though, there is another layer of oppression to be found in the control exercised by their white employers. Although Moody was able to gain freedom in the earning of money, the fact that the work she did was primarily domestic lends itself to an innate inequity where abuse of power can easily arise with no consequences. This is seen even with Anne’s first job where she worked all day sweeping and cleaning an old white woman’s entire house just to receive 75 cents and two gallons of milk that the woman let her cats drink out of. A more prominent example however, is Moody’s relationship with Mrs. Burke. Mrs. Burke employs Anne as her housekeeper and takes glee in finding subtle ways to undermine Anne and remind her that in many ways, both as her boss and as a member of the Klan, that she has power over Moody despite any attempts on her part to maintain a sense of control in their relationship.

The Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South is one that is well known and familiar to us all. We all know of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the charismatic preacher who was undisputedly the leader of the civil rights movement in the South. We have all also heard of Rosa Parks, the black woman who would not give up her seat in the bus and was thus arrested for it, she was the catalyst that sparked the civil rights movement. They were the famous people often mentioned in the Civil Rights Movement. However, they were not the only people engaged in the Civil Rights Movement, there were many more, and their stories are just as important as that of Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. That reason