Coming of age in Mississippi by Anne Moody

Coming of Age in Mississippi

In the United States, the minority populations of the country have been historically marginalized and minimized in importance. This has been true for all minorities but particularly for those who are African-American. The Civil Rights Movement was a series of organized protests against the oppression of African-Americans in the United States by members of the white majority population, particularly in the American south where African-Americans were not only marginalized but legally separated from whites because of segregation. Led by such Civil Rights organizers as Martin Luther King, Jr., African-Americans banded together to enact much-needed change throughout the country. Some of the members of the community were reluctant to engage in the Civil Rights Movement for fear of what might befall them; an understandable fear considering that so many of those fighting for their civil rights were imprisoned, beaten, or even murdered. Anne Moody was one of many African-Americans who became a reluctant freedom fighter during the Civil Rights Movement as recorded in her autobiography entitled Coming of Age in Mississippi.

Over the course of her life, Anne Moody saw how unfair she and people like her were being treated by the white majority. Like many, at first she was resigned to the fact that as an African-American, she was destined to a life of marginalization and oppression. As a child, she has to work for the white population in order to help feed her siblings, learning from early on that the only way to survive is to placate the whites. However, as she aged and saw the actions of some of her fellow African-Americans, she too joined the movement towards equality. Perhaps the defining moment in Moody's young life is the murder of Emmett Till for allegedly whistling to a white woman. She recalls a boy speaking to her on the day she learned about the murder. He said, "Everybody talking about that fourteen-year-old boy who was killed in Greenwood by some white men" (Moody 128). In her book, Moody makes it clear that this was the moment in her life where she realized how deeply ingrained was the white oppression of African-Americans and the lengths that whites could go to without fear of serious repercussions.

In college, Moody got her first taste of successful political activism by organizing a boycott of the lunchroom based on hygiene and sanitation but this would be the basis for her work later on. Among the many activities that Moody recounts in the book are a time when she participated in a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's counter. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed in using non-violent resistance against the white oppressors but many African-Americans, including the Black Panthers and the Black Muslims, did not agree with this perspective. When at the Woolworth's counter, Moody encountered not only verbal abuse but physical abuse as well. After three hours someone comes to the rescue of the protestors and when they leave the Woolworth's Moody saw that "about ninety white police officers had been standing outside the store; they had been watching the whole thing through the windows, but had not come in to stop the mob or do anything" (267). This hardened her heart quite a bit and the end of the book has her on a bus headed towards Washington D.C. And questioning whether the Civil Rights Movement can succeed.