Life of Anne Moody Essays

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

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

Coming of Age in Mississippi’s overall message that Moody wanted her readers to receive is how her anger from growing up in a poor and segregated environment pushes her to do all that she can to change the unfair treatment that African Americans were forced to live with. Rather than living as a victim under racial inequality she chooses to take a stand, and become an

In the beginning chapters of the book, we get a glimpse of the typical home and community of an African American during segregation. Many Africans Americans were too adjusted to the way of living, that they felt

     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.

Being born into a racially divided society, such as America during slavery and the decades after the Civil War, does not mean that you are born with the knowledge of racism. Racism is something that we are not born with and that we are raised to experience, follow, or fix. During the 19th century and all the way up till mid 20th century, racism was one of the biggest issues in America. Former slaves and anyone who had lived in America for some time, was aware of the racial tension that traveled through the heart of the nation and only got worse the more south you go. In Anne Moody’s autobiography, Coming of Age in Mississippi, Moody’s life is told through her eyes. It goes through her childhood until her participation in the Civil Rights movement. One of the major parts in the book is her slowly realizing the racial divide in America and the disadvantages that her skin color had come with. All the racism Moody experienced as a child until she was an adolescent led to her decision to become part of the Civil Rights movement.

Through her life at home Anne Moody experienced poverty and understood the differences between the lives of blacks and whites. Anne spent a large majority of her child in extreme poverty, having to work after school to help provide for her family her mother was a maid for white women, but her income was not enough to buy food and clothes for Anne and her sister. Food in the book was a key distinction in status of whites and blacks. On most days they would only eat bread and beans and on a good day they thrived off of milk, peanut butter or table scraps from the white families they worked for. White families didn’t know how to cook good food or prepare food hygienically. Moody realizes this while working for Miss Ola. Moody states, “After eating the food Miss Ola I could see how Mama had to do the cooking because white women didn’t know how” (Moody 37). Anne follows up with a detailed description of mucus dripping out of Miss Ola’s nose right into the soup she is about to feed them. Whites compared blacks to animals. Anne’s mother used to buy milk from the white lady on the hill until Anne discovered the lady would leave the milk out and let her cats drink out of it and then sell that same milk to the African Americans in the community for twenty-five cents. Housing was another aspect of life

Anne Moody wrote the autobiography Coming of Age in Mississippi in the late 1900s, sometime after the assassination of J. F. Kennedy. Growing up in Mississippi, Moody writes the book into different sections to better show the aspects of her life. These sections include Part One: Childhood, Part Two: High School, Part Three: College, Part Four: The Movement. This book shows demonstrates how Moody transforms from a young naive girl into a responsible woman. This book shows the obstacles that Anne had to use her powerful voice to overcome.

Anne Moody’s autobiography, Coming of Age in Mississippi talks about the poor black Americans’ struggles in Mississippi during the Civil War. Ms. Moody’s childhood experience during the War in Mississippi made her be such an activist to fight for the equality and the rights of blacks at that particular time. Born from a poor family in Mississippi, she experienced some of the worst and most dangerous times of her life in the era of pre-civil rights. Along with her black siblings, they experienced both hunger, hell and the devil himself. Racial oppression aroused black people’s fear of being killed by the whites just for their color. At this moment, Ms. Moody developed interest and passion for justice and freedom and was willing to do anything

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 fact, several reasons, such as the quietness and adaptation of the blacks, formed this distinction, especially among the older blacks generation. They believed that adaption could bring them safety and quietness would avoid dangers. Moody’s mother was a representative character of the older blacks, who resisted to change and speak of because of her long-time real fear and concerns. She became mad at Moody when the black kids randomly sat downstairs, which were the whites-only areas, in

It has been nearly fifty years since Anne Moody published her memoir entitled Coming of Age in Mississippi. Though the tension is not nearly as present now as it was in the 1960s, both media and politics revolve around the many issues of civil rights and racial divides. At the end of her book, Moody tells the audience that she “I WONDER…” (Moody 289). It is assumed that she is wondering whether or not society will overcome the large amount of racial issues. Within the memoir, Moody touches on several severe oppressive incidents that occurred to people in her life such as her class mate Jerry, her fellow Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee members, and her friend Rose. Given the many extreme circumstances that she underwent during her young adulthood, at the end of the book Moody’s opinion on what the future holds likely contains more despair than hope.

Anne helped her family by caring for her younger siblings and started working for white ladies when she was 9 years old as a house cleaner and babysitter. She worked for many white families, some were kind and some were nasty. Her first employer paid her seventy-five cents and two gallons of milk, that she let her cats drink, a week. Her mother ultimately made her quit because she felt she was being overworked. Some whites in the book, such as Mrs. Burke are very open and undeniably racist. Mrs. Burke, like so many other whites, thinks that Blacks are inferior and undeserving of proper treatment and prefers her only contact with

Anne Frank was many things: a writer, a storyteller, a witness, and a victim, among them. A fact that many seem to forget is that she was also a human being. In a concentration camp in 1945, Anne held her dying sister Margot in her arms. Her sister died very shortly after that scene; Anne died a few days later. These deaths are not featured in the famous play or classic movie based on Anne Frank’s life. Yet the true ending of Anne’s life was horrific; she suffered many days from a disease that slowly

In this book Anne has many situations in which she feels isolated from the outside world. This is similar to my life because even though I am not literally isolated from the world outside the town I live in I sometimes feel isolated. I constantly think about the fact I am just one small person, in a relatively small town, within a large world. The world is so vast, and I am stuck inside a tiny part of it. Within the small part of the world I live in I can only experience a small portion of the worlds cultures. This parallels what Anne is feeling because, as mentioned in the previous lettered section, she feels like she is stuck inside her small bubble of the annex and cannot connect with the society that is moving around her. Although Anne