Anne Moody's Coming Of Age In Mississippi

AMST 100

Paper 1

Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi, life begins in a two room shack on a plantation in Mississippi. Anne lived with her father Diddy, mother Toosweet, sister Adline, and brother Junior. They struggle with loss of jobs money, food, and their house burning down. Anne father eventually leaves the family after having an affair with a woman from their community. Toosweet struggles with having to find job after job. With this, results in Anne having to help support the family. Toosweet goes on in life to eventually marry, and have several more children, but her struggles never end.

Throughout the autobiography Anne experienced many important elements of cultural knowledge, that’s learned through her family, institutions,

and community. Two of Anne’s most impactful elements throughout her journey were prejudice, and education. With these came many struggles, learned and unlearned behaviors, and finally a set of believes that Anne formed on her own that were considered a bit off her suggested path.

Prejudice was a very significant element in the autobiography. It was very powerful and at many times very destructive. There was a very unclear, blurred color line Throughout the autobiography it’s taught at a young age don’t cross the color line, yet its consistently crossed from the white people.. Black people were considered beneath white people. Yet white people were consistently having sex with them, with the end result of having mixed children. It didn’t go both when it came to sex, only the white men could get away with it. And eventually the wives of these white men started to figure things out, and take it out on these black women involved. Throughout Anne’s life she experienced life believing light skinned against black skinned, whites against blacks, and wealthy against the poor. Anne’s influences in her early life were from her family, and close friends. Anne was taught to only obey, and work for white people. She eventually challenged these set a beliefs by becoming friends with the white peoples children, and even sitting at their dinner table with some of the people she worked for. “One Saturday I was setting the

table for them and he asked me to setup a place for myself.”(P.42) Growing up, Anne never really understood the significance of prejudice. She was even friends with Katie’s and bill the two children that lived by them at the time. They would play in each other’s yards, and Anne would jealousy watch them ride their bikes and roller skate. Until one day Anne’s family, and Katie and Bills family happened to be at the same movie, where the Negroes sat upstairs, and the whites downstairs. Anne and her sister ,and brother ran into the whites only to sit with their friends. Anne’s mother then noticed, she became angry, and they promptly left the movies. “All the way back to our house, Mama kept tellin us that we couldn’t sit downstairs, we couldn’t do this or that with white children. 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.”(P. 261) As Anne grows older she started to come into her own set of beliefs. She became hateful toward white people because she couldn’t understand why they treated blacks with so much hate, and even against black people because they allowed for the mistreatment. Anne experienced the light skinned vs dark skinned once she was eventually accepted into Taugaloo College. Later to find out she’s too black to go there, and there were too many white teachers. “You gotta be high yellow with a rich-ass daddy.”(P. 261). After taking too long to find another college, she eventually attends Taugaloo, becomes a part of the civil rights movement, and begins to realize not all groups of these individual’s are untrustworthy. The end result of her journey, was almost allowing her own prejudice’s too miss out on important opportunity’s.
Education was another relevant element in Anne’s life.

Although education wasn’t the most important expectation from Anne’s family’s standpoint. She managed to remain focused, and dedicated. Most of Anne’s family never even managed to receive an education of any sorts. Although it may not have been their intention, but at her parents, Aunts, and Uncles times they weren’t even permitted to learn how to read and write. Regardless of her parents outcome, Anne sustained her education through her several moves, eating scraps daily, having no clothes to wear, and having to work to support her family. She still remained determined to finish what she had started. At an early part in Anne’s life she worked for a family The Claiborne’s, where Mrs. Claiborne was a teacher at her school, and her husband was a business man. The Claiborne’s became an important factor with pushing her to complete her education. Anne eventually managed to graduate from high school at the top of her class. Although her family didn’t install the best values for her education. She allowed her outside support to get her through it. Anne eventually received finances for playing basketball at Natchez College. And eventually transferred and received an academic scholarship at Taugaloo College. Eventually after believing in herself, and pushing through the barriers in the 1940’s, she became unstoppable. Anne eventually joined the NAACP and fought for the rights she felt black people

deserved.
In many ways I would like to compare Anne to Ida Bell Wells-Barnett. Anne obtained many of Ida’s attributions, and fight. Culturally Anne allowed for her experiences in her life positive, and negative to help her change what she felt was of importance to her. Anne fought through all of her predetermined norms by stepping outside of the box. She didn’t allow white or black people to stop her, or her civil rights. Anne was predisposed to sit back, and allow for the prejudice’s to ruin her life. She transformed her pain into something positive. She pushed for blacks to come together, and improve these difficult times. Anne didn’t allow for her already scripted life to play out how people expected it too. With this different path she chose, it resulted in beatings, separation from her family, and witnessing many deaths. “We shall overcome, we shall overcome, and we shall overcome someday.” (P. 424).