An Analysis Of Anne Moody's Coming Of Age In Mississippi

799 Words2 Pages

Anne Moody’s narrative in the book “Coming of age in Mississippi” is her firsthand accounts with the prejudices she face in her time. Being a black woman the most noticeable one she faced was racism which shaped her into the political and social activist which we know of today. She sheds light upon the dangers of prejudices and not only white on black prejudice but many more that she experienced in her life. Anne Moody was exposed to racial prejudice very early into her life. Anne at the very young age of 4 notices the disparity between the white family and the black families. She notices how the shacks in which the black families reside have no plumbing or electricity while the white family has access to such basic utilities. As she grows older she begins to notice the disparity more and more as her and her family scrape by on white families left overs or even stealing crops from the farms. She becomes ever more confused as she ages by …show more content…

Anne begins to distrust and dislike white people as she felt they were all racists. She begins to avoid people who were mixed or “Yellow” because she thought they were all snobs who felt they were superior. Anne’s prejudices are challenged when she leaves to college and meets “Yellows” who are not rich snobs but kind and accepting. She was considering not going to Tugaloo because she felt it be filled with nothing but rich yellows and racist white teachers. She had assumed simply because teachers were right they would be racist and that because someone was yellow they would by snobs. When Anne becomes more involved with the NAACP and CORE she begins to meet whites who believe and fight for the same values as her such as the reverend. Her previous hypocritical beliefs of hating racism yet still having her own prejudices against other people due to their skin

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of The Warmth Of Other Suns

    915 Words  | 2 Pages

    In “The Warmth of Other Suns” by Isabel Wilkerson, the three main characters that the story follows face a great deal of inequality and racial prejudice in both the Jim Crow south that they left and the north that they fled to. Through their stories, as well as the excerpts from Wilkerson that serve to dispel some of the common myths and to explain some of the inequalities that others faced, one is able to make many connections between the problems that Ida Mae, George Starling, and Richard Foster, among many others, faced in their time and the obstacles to equality that our society still to this day struggles to overcome. A large reason as to why these obstacles still exist is that many have preconceived ideas about African Americans and African American Communities. However, numerous obstacles still survive to this day as a result of certain racist ideas.

    Read More

  • Summary Of Anne Moody's Coming Of Age In Mississippi And The Naapi

    1350 Words  | 3 Pages

    The forties and fifties in the United States was a period dominated by racial segregation and racism. The declaration of independence clearly stated, “All men are created equal,” which should be the fundamental belief of every citizen. America is the land of equal opportunity for every citizen to succeed and prosper through determination, hard-work and initiative. However, black citizens soon found lack of truth in these statements. The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the murder of Emmett Till in 1955 rapidly captured national headlines of civil rights movement. In the book, Coming of Age in Mississippi, the author, Anne Moody describes her experiences, her thoughts, and the movements that formed her life. The events she went through prepared her to fight for the civil right.

    Read More

  • Anne Moody's Coming of Age in Mississippi

    1803 Words  | 4 Pages

    In this autobiography of Anne Moody a.k.a. Essie Mae as she is often called in the book, is the struggles for rights that poor black Americans had in Mississippi. Things in her life lead her to be such an activist in the fight for black equality during this time. She had to go through a lot of adversity growing up like being beat, house being burned down, moving to different school, and being abuse by her mom's boyfriend. One incident that would make Anne Moody curious about racism in the south was the incident in the Movie Theater with the first white friends she had made. The other was the death of Emmett Tillman and other racial incidents that would involve harsh and deadly circumstances. These this would make Miss Moody realize that this should not be tolerated in a free world.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Coming Of Age In Mississippi

    1101 Words  | 3 Pages

    Coming of Age in Mississippi is the amazing story of Anne Moody 's unbreakable spirit and character throughout the first twenty-three years of her life. Time and time again she speaks of unthinkable odds and conditions and how she manages to keep excelling in her aspirations, yet she ends the book with a tone of hesitation, fear, and skepticism. While she continually fought the tide of society and her elders, suddenly in the end she is speaking as if it all may have been for not. It doesn?t take a literary genius nor a psychology major to figure out why. With all that was stacked against her cause, time and time again, it is easy to see why she would doubt the future of the civil rights movement in 1964 as she rode that Greyhound bus to Washington once again.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Anne Moody's Coming Of Age In Mississippi

    1178 Words  | 3 Pages

    Anne Moody’s memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi, is an influential insight into the existence of a young girl growing up in the South during the Civil-Rights Movement. Moody’s book records her coming of age as a woman, and possibly more significantly, it chronicles her coming of age as a politically active Negro woman. She is faced with countless problems dealing with the racism and threat of the South as a poor African American female. Her childhood and early years in school set up groundwork for her racial consciousness. Moody assembled that foundation as she went to college and scatter the seeds of political activism. During her later years in college, Moody became active in numerous organizations devoted to creating changes to the civil rights of her people. These actions ultimately led to her disillusionment with the success of the movement, despite her constant action. These factors have contributed in shaping her attitude towards race and her skepticism about fundamental change in society.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Coming Of Age In Mississippi

    1398 Words  | 3 Pages

    Coming of Age in Mississippi was written by Anne Moody and published in 1968. This is a story about Moody as an African American woman who was born and grown up in rural area in Mississippi. The story take places prior and during the U.S Civil Right Movement. The life of Moody was told in four chapters. The first part is about Moody’s memories as a kid, her adolescence life in high school, her twenties as in college, and lastly her life as an activist in the Movement. This is where the story gotten interesting as Moody got involved in Civil Right Movement. As Moody reflected, she struggled against racism through her entire life and she even experienced sexism among her activist fellas.

    Read More

  • White Teacher by Vivian Gussin Paley

    818 Words  | 2 Pages

    This passage bothered me. It is probably the part that bugged me the most about this book. There are many African Americans who are better behaved, smarter, more artistic, more athletic, etc. then white children. There are also many African Americans who are less educated and more poorly behaved than white children, but the same for both of these things go with white children. It bothers me that she knows that if the worst child in the class was white she wouldn't care if the best child in the class was white. I think that throughout the book she often generalizes with African Americans and doesn't even realize it. She claims that she is getting better, but I don't think that she really is. She keeps trying to have the African American children become the same as the white children.

    Read More

  • Coming Of Age In Mississippi

    1378 Words  | 3 Pages

    There are many traces of slavery throughout this book. I think that one of the biggest examples is in the first pages of the book describing where she lives and what her parents do. She lived on a plantation with her parents in a two room wooden shack. Their house was on the top of the hill along with the Carter's plantation. The other blacks that worked there all lived at the bottom of the hill. Her parents were farmers for Mr. Cater, and grew corn and cotton. Another example of slavery is when Ann is beaten by her father for something that she did not even do. I think this is kind of like when slaves got beaten for things that they could not help; such as getting tired or not working fast enough. Another instance is when Anne goes to the movies with two of her white neighbors and she has to sit in a different place than them. This does not exactly show slavery but it says that white people are better.

    Read More

  • Prejudice in Not Without Laughter by Langston Hughes

    1743 Words  | 4 Pages

    Throughout Hughes’ Not Without Laughter, we see the long-term effect of generations of prejudice and abuse against blacks. Over time, this prejudice manifested itself through the development of several social classes within the black community. Hughes’, through the eyes of young Sandy, shows us how the color of one’s skin, the church they attend, the level of education an individual attained, and the type of employment someone could find impacted their standing within the community and dictated the social class they belonged to. Tragically, decades of slavery and abuse resulted in a class system within the black community that was not built around seeking happiness or fulfillment but, equality through gaining the approval of whites.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Where The Girls Are And Coming Of Age In Mississippi

    1208 Words  | 3 Pages

    Moody herself was only nine years old when she was first employed by a white family as a domestic worker. She worked all day and into the night and was treated like an animal for a mere seventy-five cents and two gallons of soiled milk. She did this in order to try to provide some food security for her family (39-41). Moody’s mother, Toosweet, worked for many white families and lived on their land. For example, they live on Mr. Carter’s plantation, Mrs. Cooks’ land, and Mrs. Johnsons’ pasture (3, 13, 31). One time when Toosweet had to quit her job they were kicked out of the house the very next day; “the white lady was so mad she couldn’t get Mama to stay that the next day she told Mama to leave to make room for the new maid” (31). This caused Moody to be able to sympathize with people of Canton and to recognize and fight for their needs. Moody said on page 341 of Coming of Age in

    Read More

  • Kaffir Boy Analysis

    1343 Words  | 3 Pages

    Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi and Mark Mathabane’s Kaffir Boy are both coming-of-age narratives that were written through the eyes and experiences of young people who grew up in a world of apartheid. Although, it should be noted that they both have parallels in their stories as well as distinctions one should take into account the times and places in which each occurred. While Coming of Age in Mississippi occurred during a Jim Crow era in the American South, between 1944 and 1968, Kaffir Boy’s autobiographical narrative occurred in the regime of South Africa’s apartheid struggle from 1960 to 1978 in the town of Alexandra. During the late 20th century both narratives offer a framework of racism, a value and yearn for education and the struggle and will to survive. This essay will compile how both narratives experienced their areas race-relations given the time and place that they are in.

    Read More

  • The Economic Exploitation of African Americans

    1299 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...ects on the Sharecropper, the domestic and finally the educated Negro. It reveals the resilience and fortitude that a young woman had the courage to challenge. Anne Moody's autobiography is a testimony which gives hope to generations present and future.

    Read More

  • Hiram Hillburn Character Analysis

    799 Words  | 2 Pages

    African-Americans aged 12 and up are the most victimized group in America. 41.7 over 1,000 of them are victims of violent crimes, compared with whites (36.3 over 1,000). This does not include murder. Back then during the era of the Jim Crow laws, it was even worse. However, during that time period when there were many oppressed blacks, there were many whites who courageously defied against the acts of racism, and proved that the color of your skin should not matter. This essay will compare and contrast two Caucasian characters by the names of Hiram Hillburn (The Mississippi Trial, 1955) and Celia Foote (The Help), who also went against the acts of prejudice.

    Read More

  • Coming of Age in Mississippi and Segregation

    1314 Words  | 3 Pages

    Moody’s position as an African American woman provides a unique insight into these themes through her story. As a little girl, Moody would sit on the porch of her house watch her parents go to work. Everyday she would see them walk down the hill at the break of dawn to go to work, and walk back up when the sun was going down to come back home. At this time in her life, Moody did not understand segregation, and that her parents were slaves and working for a white man. But, as growing up poor and black in the rural south with a single mother trying to provide for her family, Moody quickly realized the importance of working. Working as a woman in the forties and fifties was completely different from males. They were still fighting for gender equality, which restricted women to working low wage jobs like maids for white families. Moody has a unique insight to the world of working because she was a young lady that was working herself to help keep herself and her bother and sister in school. Through work, Moody started to realize what segregation was and how it impacted her and her life. While working for Mrs. Johnson and spending the nights with Miss Ola, she started to realize basic di...

    Read More

  • Analysis of Anne Moody's Coming of Age in Mississippi

    1206 Words  | 3 Pages

    There were many acts of violence that took place during Moody’s childhood that helped prove to her that interracial relationships were unacceptable. For example, white people burned down the Taplin family home, killing everyone inside. Moody recalls being in shock and everyone in the car sitting still in dead silence, “We sat in the car for about an hour, silently looking at this debris and the ashes that covered the nine charcoal-burned bodies . . . I shall never forget the expressions on the faces of the Negroes. There was almost unanimous hopelessness in them.” It wasn’t until highschool when she came to her first realization about the racial problems and violence that have been plaguing her when a fourteen-year-old African American boy is murdered for having whistled at a white woman. Before this, Moody was under the impression that “Evil Spirits” were to blame for the mysterious deaths of African Americans, “Up ...

    Read More

More about An Analysis Of Anne Moody's Coming Of Age In Mississippi

Open Document