The Monograph Coming of age in Mississippi
MONOGRAPH PAPER
COMING OF AGE IN MISSISSIPPI
Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody was published on 1968. This autobiography is memoires of Anne Moody about growing up poor and black in the rural Mississippi. The book was divided into four parts from childhood until her late 20s that described the experiences of Anne Moody in the Civil Rights Movement and her struggles against racism. Anne Moody was born in the 1940s which was the time after World War II. This was the period of the development of the U.S. However, the racism between Whites and Blacks still existed. As an African-American girl lived in that time, she had a life of poverty and misery. During her childhood, she had to face with many adversities such as the broke up of her parents, a fragile mother, and the lack of food because of many children in her family. She had to do domestic work for a white family at nine years old to help feed her siblings (Moody 1968, 45). She started curious about while White people lived in big house and ate good meals. Her curiosity was even more in an incident at the Movie Theatre that the Negroes sat upstairs in the balcony and the whites sat downstairs (Moody 1968, 33). She started to think why the whites’ schools, homes, and streets were better than Negroes’ (Moody 1968, 34). And, her curiosity peaked after Emmett Till’s death. He was a fourteen-year-old black boy. “He was killed because he got out of his place with a white woman. A boy from Mississippi would have known better than that. This boy was from Chicago. Negroes up North have no respect for people. They think they can get away with anything. He just came to Mississippi and put a whole lot of notions in the boys’ heads and stirred up a lot of trouble.” (Moody 1968, 132) This event marked as the beginning of Moody’s life in the future. She tried to ask adults but nothing was received. She had to find the answers by herself. These were examples for the racism in the
COMING OF AGE IN MISSISSIPPI
Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody was published on 1968. This autobiography is memoires of Anne Moody about growing up poor and black in the rural Mississippi. The book was divided into four parts from childhood until her late 20s that described the experiences of Anne Moody in the Civil Rights Movement and her struggles against racism. Anne Moody was born in the 1940s which was the time after World War II. This was the period of the development of the U.S. However, the racism between Whites and Blacks still existed. As an African-American girl lived in that time, she had a life of poverty and misery. During her childhood, she had to face with many adversities such as the broke up of her parents, a fragile mother, and the lack of food because of many children in her family. She had to do domestic work for a white family at nine years old to help feed her siblings (Moody 1968, 45). She started curious about while White people lived in big house and ate good meals. Her curiosity was even more in an incident at the Movie Theatre that the Negroes sat upstairs in the balcony and the whites sat downstairs (Moody 1968, 33). She started to think why the whites’ schools, homes, and streets were better than Negroes’ (Moody 1968, 34). And, her curiosity peaked after Emmett Till’s death. He was a fourteen-year-old black boy. “He was killed because he got out of his place with a white woman. A boy from Mississippi would have known better than that. This boy was from Chicago. Negroes up North have no respect for people. They think they can get away with anything. He just came to Mississippi and put a whole lot of notions in the boys’ heads and stirred up a lot of trouble.” (Moody 1968, 132) This event marked as the beginning of Moody’s life in the future. She tried to ask adults but nothing was received. She had to find the answers by herself. These were examples for the racism in the
Cited: Ayers, Edward, Lewis L. Gould, David M. Oshinsky, and Jean R. Soderlund. American Passages: A History of the United States, Advantage Edition, Fourth Edition. Boston: Suzanne Jeans, 2010. 735-93. Print. Moody, Anne. Coming of Age in Mississippi: The Classic Autobiography of Growing Up Poor and Black in the Rural South. New York: Bantam Dell, 1968. Print.