Anne Moody's Coming Of Age In Mississippi

In Anne Moody’s autobiography, Coming of Age in Mississippi, she describes what it was like to grow up during the Jim Crow era of the Deep South in poverty in a household of five and constantly growing. As Moody developed into a woman she dealt with many hardships. She overcame the adversities of being a girl of color during this time. Moody’s education helped her understand the full effects of everything happening around her. As a young girl, Anne’s first “teacher” was her very own mother. Anne was a curious little girl. With her curious ways and always wanting to find out what is happening around her, her mother wouldn’t give her any information. Her mother mostly told her to keep quiet and act like she doesn’t know what is happening. Besides

Emmett came down to Mississippi and was murdered on account of getting “out of his place with a white woman” (132) and a group of white men killed him. “Before Emmett Till’s murder, I had known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was a new fear known to me-the fear of being killed just because I was black.” (132) Anne learns in this episode how violent whites can really be and just a glimpse of how segregation works. While the people of color in town are growing scared and afraid to leave their homes, Anne responds differently. “I hated the white men who murdered Emmett Till and I hated all the other whites who were responsible for the countless murders Ms. Rice had told me about and those I vaguely remembered from childhood. But I also hated Negroes. I hated them for not standing up and doing something about the murders.”(136) She starts to get angry that black people aren’t standing up for themselves and letting the white people walk all over them and listen and follow their every demand. Black adults are doing the same thing they have been doing for years and that’s to clean white people’s homes and work on plantation farm and act like nothing is happening because they do not want to draw attention to themselves that would put them in the position on Emmett Till. As Anne works every day with probably the most racist woman in all of town, Miss Burke, her mother’s advice to her was “You go on to work before you is late. And don’t you let on like you know nothing about that boy being killed before Miss Burke them. Just do your work like you don’t know nothing. ” (130) Her mother put in these positions where if she said something she would get in some type of way but she also knew that what was happening wasn’t right and should have a end to all of