Anne Moody's Coming Of Age In Mississippi

Coming of Age in Mississippi entails the early life of Anne Moody, an African-American women growing up in rural Mississippi. Within her book, Anne illustrates the struggles she endures up to her early adult life. Moody’s experiences growing up gave her conflicted emotions about the dissatisfaction and intolerance that plagued the South. Rather than becoming a victim of circumstance, the racial lessons she learns growing up in Mississippi propel her to become an activist for civil rights.

Anne Moody had a difficult childhood due to her family living in a rural county in Mississippi marked by extreme poverty and racism. Having to work at a young age to support her family, she experienced the social significance of race through her interactions at school and with her employers such as Mrs. Burke. Becoming a participant and an observer of her surroundings, Moody is able to grasp the role that racism, as well as the notion of black inferiority, plays within the South. Mrs. Burke, a well known racist, develops a tense relationship with Anne,

trying to make it clear to her that she must submit to a second-class role when interacting with whites. Rather than accepting these conditions, Anne displayed courage by taking the role she had chosen for herself, while challenging the role with which society has issued her. When Mrs. Burke attempted to blame Anne for stealing her wallet, Anne resigns and works elsewhere, rather than submit to the manipulation with obedience.
There were different environmental aspects within Centerville that influenced Anne Moody’s views on racism.

The African-American community faced racial injustice in many forms such as low paying jobs, inadequate schools, and disenfranchisement. Moody not only experienced racial prejudice from whites, but also from the African American population. When Raymond’s mother, Miss Pearl, gives Mama the cold shoulder because she is darker skinned, this leaves an astonishing impression on Anne. The imprints of racial prejudice on Moody were instilled in her until she met individuals like Miss Ola, Linda Jean Jenkins, or Mrs. Burke’s Mother, who treated Anne with respect. It is brought to light again later in her life when she almost turns down a scholarship to Tugaloo because she fears that the mulatto students will mistreat her. Ultimately, racial prejudice almost costs Anne from taking significant opportunities presented to

her.
In terms of responding to the issue of race, Anne took a different approach compared to her family, peers, and adults around her. Anne found it difficult and frustrating to understand how blacks simply accepted their assigned inferiorities. After entering High School, she becomes more aware of the racism that she has been living with and starts to form her own opinions about the situation. She comes to realize that the black community in Centerville is too submissive about the conditions in which they are living under. After the murder of Emmitt Till, Anne becomes extremely bothered by the issue, while her family continues to live in fear or acceptance about the events that have occurred. Anne become fed up with both African-Americans and whites when in she says “But I also hated Negroes. I hated them for not standing up and doing something about the murders. In fact, I think I had a stronger resentment toward Negroes for letting the whites kill them than toward the whites” (Moody, 136). Witnessing this lack of resistance further fuels her desires to respond with action later in her life when she becomes active through the SNCC and the NAACP chapters at Tugaloo. Her College experiences of attending rallies and even forming a bus sit-in, displays her convictions toward ending racial inequality.
Through the eyes of Moody, there were many failures within the movement and its leadership. While working for the CORE group in Canton, Mississippi, she realized that the primary objective of the movement is to focus on voting rights. Anne takes on an unconventional role in the movement by working on uplifting the economic situation for the people in Canton. After learning that many potential voters are afraid to register because of fear that they will lose their jobs from their white employers, she combats the issue by distributing clothes and food to help the situation. She also attempts to start a program to lend money to blacks in order to buy their own farms. Eventually, Anne starts to hold criticisms with the movement in Mississippi after seeing the situation for African-Americans become worse, even after her vigorous work on voter registration. It becomes almost to much for her to handle after C.O. Chinn, a local entrepreneur who started the movement, loses all of his property and ends up serving in a chain gang. Ultimately, Anne criticizes the movement for focusing on voting rights rather than improving the economic conditions for African-Americans.
Not only did Moody hold condemnations for the movement, she also condemned the strategy taken by Martin Luther King Jr. and other Civil Rights leaders. After attending the March on Washington, Anne felt that MLK’s “I had a Dream” speech was out of touch with reality on the conditions that African-Americans faced. At the March she said, “I sat on the grass and listened to the speakers, to discover we had “dreamers” instead of leaders leading us” (Moody, 335). Overall, Anne views MLK’s speech as too idealistic and irrelevant to the difficult work she and her activists have been doing back in Mississippi. The means of fighting racial inequality taken up by MLK and Civil Rights leaders through nonviolent rallies and demonstrations did not fit with Anne’s views on the matter. She believed that these methods were ineffective and did not achieve the outcomes that the African-American community deserved. It is after the March on Washington when Moody decides to begin actively working to provide economic help through her work with CORE.
Anne ends her memoire with the question of whether all of her work will make a fundamental difference in the end. Her trials and experiences growing up in a racially divided environment, gave her the necessary tools she needed to become an influential activist. The lessons that Moody learned coming of age in a racial environment, allowed her to observe and question different aspects of society at the time. These characteristics transitioned to the role she played in the movement and the way she viewed the strategy taken by its leaders.