Growing up in the “Delta”: From the Viewpoint of Creola James

628 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: racial discrimination in the black community

In 1968 Creola Nanette Page was born to two young black parents living in Mound Bayou, Mississippi. Growing up in the first all racially black town of Mound Bayou, Mrs. James wasn’t really exposed to racial discrimination and poverty. Mound Bayou being an all-black town everyone was mostly equal. Although not exposed to it on a daily basis she was thoroughly warned of it. As she grew older, and her parents moved to Shaw, Mississippi. It was then that Mrs. James witnessed the full extent of what she was warned of. Shaw was a predominantly white area. The people that lived there were very mean and rude to the blacks that lived there. The schools, stores, and housing areas were segregated. The now elementary school was the black school, and the high school was the white school. She went to the local primary school until they integrated the schools and graduated from Shaw High School, where her mother taught. Witnessing all the bad things that happened in Shaw, she decided she did not want to stay there all her life. She then went to attend college at Mississippi Valley State University where she met her husband. Being a Military spouse, she has travelled to Europe with her husband and three children. Creola James now lives in Kiln, Mississippi where she is a pre-kindergarten teacher at West Hancock Elementary. In Shaw, Mrs. James witness racism every day. From ignorant comments and names such as the derogatory term “niggar” to white men ganging up on a single black man threating to kill him and his family. She would also hear stories about the racial decimation involving the areas and people around her. She remembers one day when she was about 14 years old. She was in Parchman visiting her grandparents with her mother. By this ti... ... middle of paper ... ... type of meat. She couldn’t recognize the type, but she didn’t find anything wrong with, so she decide to cook it. I wasn’t until she had finished cooking that she realized that the meat that she was about to feed her children was not chicken, fish or turkey, but wild rabbit meat. Her father would sometimes bring home wild meat because the meat in the store would either be too high or avoid the problems from some of the ignorant white men hanging around the store. From back in the 1960 and 70s, life has gotten better for the black people living in the Mississippi Delta. There may still be some areas that are too stubborn to change over the years, but they are slowly changing. Mrs. James is very proud of her hometown. She has come a long way, but she will never forget the past and what she has witnessed. Works Cited James, Creola. Personal interview. 11 Mar. 2014.

Show More
Related

  • 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

  • Racism In Anne Moody's 'We Shall Overcome'

    1709 Words  | 4 Pages

    “We Shall Overcome” was a popular song of comfort and strength during the civil rights movement; it was a rallying cry for many black people who had experienced the racial injustices of the south. The song instilled hope that one day they would “overcome” the overt and institutional racism preventing them from possessing the same rights as white citizens. Anne Moody describes several instances when this song helped uplift her through the low points of her life as a black woman growing up in Mississippi in the 1950s and early 1960s. By the end of her autobiography “Coming Of Age In Mississippi” (1968), she saw a stream of excessive and unending violence perpetrated by white people and the crippling effects of poverty on the black people of

    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

  • Coming Of Age In Mississippi Critical Analysis

    1501 Words  | 4 Pages

    “Coming of Age in Mississippi” an autobiography by Anne Moody gives a beautifully honest view of the Deep South from a young African American woman. In her Autobiography Moody shares her experiences of growing up as a poor African American in a racist society. She also depicts the changes inflicted upon her by the conditions in which she is treated throughout her life. These stories scrounged up from Anne’s past are separated into 4 sections of her book. One for her Childhood in which she partially resided on a plantation, the next was her High School experiences that lead to the next chapter of her life, college. The end of Anne’s remarkable journey to adulthood takes place inside her college life but is titled The Movement in tribute to the

    Read More

  • Amanda Dickson's Experiences In Anebellum Georgia By Kent Anderson Leslie

    1161 Words  | 3 Pages

    Based on the evidence supplied by author Kent Anderson Leslie, slaves in antebellum Georgia did not always live under the oppressive system of chattel labor. According to Leslie, the rules that applied to racial hierarchy were not strictly enforced, especially when it came to propertied and wealthy planters such as David Dickson who chose to raise his mixed-race daughter at home. Amanda Dickson’s experiences during Reconstruction demonstrate that she had much more freedom after slavery was abolished than may have been expected before the Civil War. Amanda Dickson’s experiences and those of her mother in particular do not fit the presumed mold of oppressed slave with no opportunity for a better life.

    Read More

  • Coming Of Age In Mississippi Essay

    775 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Anne Moody’s book Coming of Age In Mississippi, we are given a first hand look of what it was like growing up as an African-American in the south during the mid 20th century. Anne recalls many different obstacles in which she had to overcome- or at least stand up to. Many of the struggles Anne faces throughout her early life may not be out of the ordinary for this time, but how Anne chooses to deal with these issues is what truly defines her to be an extraordinary character of American history.

    Read More

  • Strength and Racism in 'The Secret Life of Bees'

    662 Words  | 2 Pages

    The segregation in South Carolina happens everywhere and every day. Indeed, racism is manifested through the media, the law, which legitimizes segregation, and the perceptions that white and black people have of each other. Because of the laws against colored people, Rosaleen, as a black woman, lives with constraints in her life. For example, she cannot live in a house with white people (Kidd, p.8), she cannot represent Lily at the charm school (Kidd, p.19), or even to travel with a car with white people (Kidd, p.76). The media is also influenced by racism, and constantly shows news about segregation such as the case of Martin Luther King, who is arrested because he wan...

    Read More

  • MS History Reap What You Sew

    636 Words  | 2 Pages

    Mississippi history is tied to the Mississippi River, cotton, and racism. The River has been a blessing and a curse in its past creating both fertile land but also subject to flooding and an instrument of the Confederate loss of the Civil War. Cotton was long the King of Mississippi’s agricultural system, but at great detriment to African-Americans due to the systems of slavery and sharecropping. Racism has run through the whole of Mississippi history also at great injury to African-Americans. Mississippi and its African-American population is reaping negative returns from the racist systems of slavery, sharecropping, and segregation; Mississippi is the poorest state in the nation with high rates of poverty, obesity, and diabetes especially in the Delta region were slavery, sharecropping, and racism were enforced so fervently.

    Read More

  • Overcoming Struggles: A Study of 'The Help'

    955 Words  | 2 Pages

    She shows how these fictions are woven into the fabric of everyday life in Jackson, from the laws to ordinary conversations, and how these beliefs get passed from generation to generation. It shows a deep mistrust of whites on the part of the black community, who have been betrayed by them again and again. It also shows how powerful and how dangerous it can be to challenge the stereotypes and dissolve the lines that are meant to separate people from each other on the basis of skin

    Read More

  • Fear and Redemption in Cry the Beloved Country

    553 Words  | 2 Pages

    We remember Mrs. Lithebe's words, "For what else are we born?" and we see that there are some white men who do care. We also learn of James Jarvis's suffering and fear.

    Read More

  • The Help Movie Analysis

    875 Words  | 2 Pages

    For this assignment, the movie “The Help” was chosen to review and analyze because it presents a story of fighting injustice through diverse ways. The three main characters of the movie are Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, a young white woman, Aibileen Clark, and Minny Jackson, two colored maids. Throughout the story, we follow these three women as they are brought together to record colored maids’ stories about their experiences working for the white families of Jackson. The movie explores the social inequalities such as racism and segregation between African Americans and whites during the 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi.

    Read More

  • The Dirty South

    1402 Words  | 3 Pages

    I grew up in the city of Birmingham, Alabama. I was born there December 11, 1947. Most of the memories I have of growing up there are the most painful memories that I have, which is strong racism and living in every day fright. I remember not being able to drink out of the cleaner water fountains around town; they were for the white people. The water fountains that were available to us were few, far between and very filthy. The black people were treated like dogs in Birmingham. I remember having to enter of the all stores and restaurants in town through the back entrances. One place I remember so vividly was a restaurant called Stadium Grill. We ordered food there every week while we were doing the wash across the street at the Laundromat. We enter in the back door into a very tiny poorly lit room. There were no tables or chairs for us to sit and eat there, it wasn’t allowed. There was only a small window to which we placed our orders and left. The front of the restaurant was large; it had tables with real cloth coverings and beautiful flowers sitting in the middle of the tables. I never once stepped foot inside the front of that restaurant. The way our communities were much different than they are now. Black people were not allowed to live among the white people. The white people lived in big lavish homes on the far east side of town and the blacks lived on the west side of town in small run down homes. There was, however, one subdivision that the wealthier black families lived. The name of it was the Goldwire Area and even now it never compares to the homes in which the poverty stricken families live now.

    Read More

  • Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody

    1264 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout all of history there is someone around to see it happen and give record of what they saw. “Coming of Age in Mississippi” written by Anne Moody is a first person autobiography set in Mississippi. Being an autobiography the story mainly follows Anne Moody growing up, showing her different ways of thinking as she grows older. From poverty filled childhood to becoming an activist within the Civil Rights Movement. The story feels authentic, adding a realistic perspective showing her struggles of living in Mississippi. She faces various obstacles which disillusion her in the fight for equality. Although the novel only gives one perspective the novel’s authenticity relies in the reality of raci...

    Read More

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

    1206 Words  | 3 Pages

    Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi is a narrated autobiography depicting what it was like to grow up in the South as a poor African American female. Her autobiography takes us through her life journey beginning with her at the age of four all the way through to her adult years and her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. The book is divided into four periods: Childhood, High School, College and The Movement. Each of these periods represents the process by which she “came of age” with each stage and its experiences having an effect on her enlightenment. She illustrates how important the Civil Rights Movement was by detailing the economic, social, and racial injustices against African Americans she experienced.

    Read More

More about Growing up in the “Delta”: From the Viewpoint of Creola James

Open Document