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Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody essay
Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody essay
Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody essay
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During the 1960s, many Black Americans drew attention to the inequalities among races in society. Protest groups formed and demonstrations highlighting discrimination towards dark people were a common practice for civil rights activists. Some activists believed non-violence was the only way to overcome, and others, such as Anne Moody and the Black Panthers, had a more aggressive attitude towards gaining freedom. In her autobiography, The Coming of Age in Mississippi, Anne Moody describes the hardships of growing up in the heavily racist South, and displays the “price you pay daily for being Black.” (p.361) She grows tired of seeing her Black companions beaten, raped, murdered, and denied their opportunity to prosper in the land of plenty: America. The Black Panthers’ assertive mindset was aimed to exemplify the injustices of a prejudiced society that denied Blacks the power to determine their own destiny. At a young age, Anne realizes that there is something that gives Whites privilege over Blacks. She thinks that there is a secret to why Blacks always have to watch a movie from the balcony while Whites watch from the floor. Both Anne Moody and the Black Panthers discover this secret, and use an assertive approach in their civil rights activism for social and political reform that would finally give Blacks the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that are granted to all Americans. The secret was racial discrimination.
The Black Panther Party, which was co-founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in 1966, was a political party that pushed to overcome social oppression. After the assassination of Black activist Malcom X, the Panthers decided they had enough of seeing their race be denied the freedom they deserved. Members of the Black Panthers were tired of a society that continued to consider them “niggers.” They were tired of not having the chance to get out of poverty and live comfortably. They were tired of not getting a quality education that public schools in America should’ve been providing them. They were tired of being beaten, harassed, and unruly discriminated against by police solely because of the color of their skin. They wanted to live in the beautiful nation that America appeared to be for Whites. They wanted freedom and equality for African-Americans.
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...y for all Americans written in the constitution. Both believed that in order to put an end to the blatent racial discrimination that prevents Blacks from eating at certain restaurants or prevents them from attending a good school, they have to “take certain positive actions to work on the problems” the are faced with everyone because of their skin color. (p. 290) These actions can be food drives, clothing drives, voting, health care, providing protection and safety, or anything that gives African-Americans a better chance to finally be considered first-class citizens along with everyone else. They felt that they needed to be “professional agitators” in order to draw attention to the inequalities Blacks face day to day like not being able to use certain bus stations. During the 1960s, the Black Panthers and Anne Moody fought with all their hearts to gain the unalienable rights granted to them about 100 years prior. Anne fought so hard and dedicated her life so fully to finally be treated like an real American that she got sick. After recovering, Anne came back to fight some more. She knew, along with the Black Panthers, that “the power to change things was in themselves.” (p. 371)
The Party’s fight for redistribution of wealth and the establishment of social, political and social equality across gender and color barriers made it one of the first organizations in U.S. history to militantly struggle for working class liberation and ethnic minorities (Baggins, Brian). The Black Panther Party set up a ten-point program much like Malcolm X’s Nation of Islam that called for American society to realize political, economic and social equal opportunity based on the principles of socialism, all of which was summarized by the final point: "We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace" (Newton, Huey P). The Black Panther Party wanted to achieve these goals through militant force. In the words of Che Guevara, “Words are beautiful, but action is supre...
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.
The first step Moody took on her journey of activism was to join the NAACP and SNCC. The majority of work done by Anne Moody while working for these two organizations was voter registration drives. During Moody’s stay at college, she would often travel to the delta and stay in the Freedom House. Here, Moody and her colleagues would plan and execute the voter registration drives. Moody would also organize rallies. Unfortunately, these rallies were poorly attended, and not much was accomplished. Many Negroes were too afraid to vote and did not attend the rallies because of the threat of losing their jobs. The tactic of making Negroes aware of their civil rights in a nonviolent and passive manner failed from the beginning of Moody’s inception into the Movement.
Fannie Lou Hamer and Malcolm X, like most civil rights activists, were exposed to the horrors of racism on a daily basis. These two leaders in particular, recognized a recurring theme of conscious oppression of Black Americans on the part of white Americans and identified the ways in which the “dominant” social group benefited from such oppression. Fannie Lou Hamer’s experience sharecropping and within the justice system helped her to develop an ideology of civil rights that centered on the empowerment of Black Americans. When Hamer was six years old the owner of the plantation on which her family lived and worked encouraged her to pick cotton. Making it seem like a game or challenge, the owner offered her a reward of food, knowing that the young girl was going hungry as a result of the limited amount of food he supplied to her family. Just like that, Hamer was tricked into picking cotton to earn minimal rewards.2 This anecdote from her life parallels the struggle of many sharecroppers at the time. Released from slavery, Black me...
This political shift materialized with the advent of the Southern Strategy, in which Democratic president Lyndon Johnson’s support of Civil Rights harmed his political power in the South, Nixon and the Republican Party picked up on these formerly blue states and promoted conservative politics in order to gain a larger voter representation. Nixon was elected in a year drenched in social and political unrest as race riots occurred in 118 U.S. cities in the aftermath of Martin Luther King’s murder, as well as overall American bitterness due to the assassination of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and the extensive student-led activist opposition to the Vietnam War. The late 1960’s also saw the advent of several movements promoting Black Nationalism to unify the African-American community through the efforts of Black Power, most notably the formation of the Black Panthers in 1967 who were dedicated to overseeing the protection of African-Americans against police brutality and the support of disadvantaged street children through their Free Breakfast for Children program. During this time, black power was politically reflected through the electorate as the 1960-70’s saw a rise in Black elected officials. In 1969 there were a total of 994 black men and 131 black women in office in the country, this figure more than tripled by 1975 when there were 2969 black men and 530 black women acting in office; more than half of these elected officials were acting in Southern States....
In America, the fortie s and fifties was a time of racism and racial segregation. The Declaration of Independence states “all men are created equal” and America is viewed as the land of equal opportunity. However, blacks soon found the lack of truth in these statements; and with the Montgomery bus boycott marking the beginning of retaliation, the civil rights movement will grow during the mid – sixties. In the autobiography, Coming of Age in Mississippi, Anne Moody describes the environment, the thoughts, and the actions that formed her life while growing up in the segregated southern state of Mississippi. As a young child, Moody accepted society as the way it was and did not see a difference in the skin color of a white person as opposed to that of a black. It was not until a movie incident did she begin to realize that the color of her skin made her inferior. “Their whiteness provided them with a pass to downstairs in that nice section and my blackness sent me to the balcony. Now that I was thinking about it, their schools, homes, and streets were better than mine.” Soon after Moody entered high school, Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old boy from Chicago, was killed for whistling at a white woman. “Emmett Till’s murder had proved it was a crime, punishable by death, for a Negro man to even whistle at a white woman in Mississippi.” Although her mother refused to give an explanation of the organization, Moody learned about the NAACP from one of her teachers soon after the incident. It was at age fifteen that Moody really began to hate people. Not only did she hate the whites that committed the murders, but she also hated the blacks for allowing the horrid actions to occur. When there were rumors about black men having sexual relationships with white women, Negro men became afraid even to walk the streets. One of Moody’s high school classmates, Jerry, was beaten after being accused of making telephone calls to a white operator with threats of molesting her. Even more tragic was the Taplin fire. A whole family was burned in the Taplin family home and although the police tried to blame it on a kerosene lamp, the blacks knew it was purposely started with gasoline. To get away from all the horrifying things going on in her town, Moody leaves to stay with family members in Baton Rouge.
Lunch sit ins, bus riots, song protests, blacks in “white only” areas. These are only a few of the methods that were practiced during the African American Civil Rights Movement in the United States of America in the fifties and sixties. It was a major movement in the country’s history, and it was brought about by people that were tired of tolerating the daily struggles and oppression caused by white supremacists and racists. Anne Moody was a brave and ambitious young woman, who struggled as an African American woman in the rural and conservative South. She pushed the boundaries that were governmentally set for blacks, and she was a remarkable civil rights activist, never letting anyone prevent her from doing something just because she was black. Often in her experiences people sang freedom songs, Anne and Malcolm X were outgoing a children, shaping their future in the Civil Rights
In the text, “From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans,” the authors mention that the Black Panthers were more focused on black men then woman, who they saw as inferior and wanted men “who can control”. On the other hand in “ A Huey P. Newton Story”, the Black Panthers are described as a party based on a group or a whole not one gender over the other; however, it does emphasize that the leaders were male. No matter one’s observation of the attitudes of the party in “The Ten Point Plan”, there is no separation by gender when it explains the wants of the party but only a whole community. The message of sticking together is very clear throughout the plan as words such as, “We” and “people” are used in almost every point to exaggerate the idea that the plan will only work if everyone is
I led a very important life in the 1960s as I played a crucial role in instilling pride within African Americans. I was born in Monroe, Louisiana in 1942, where I grew up in a poor family and turned to criminal activities as a result. After graduating high school, I attended college at Merritt College where I was exposed to the works of many famous civil rights activists, such as Malcolm X and Karl Marx. As a result, I created the Black Panther Party for Self Defense alongside my friend, Bobby Seale, in an attempt to become more involved within the African American community. Although I was successful in creating a party that would help African American citizens to feel a bit safer, I was unable to stray from my violent path. From 1964 to 1989,
Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi and Eyes on the Prize characterize life for African-Americans during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s as full of tension, fear, and violence. Eyes on the Prize is a documentary series that details major figures and events of the movement, while Anne Moody gives a deeply personal autobiographical account of her own experiences as an African American growing up in deeply segregated and racist Mississippi and as a civil rights activist during and after college. These two accounts are very different in their style yet contain countless connections in their events and reflect many ongoing struggles of the movement. These sources provide an excellent basis for discussion of nonviolence versus violence
Anne Moody was a part of the Civil Rights movement firsthand, but in her coming of age as a civil rights worker she came to doubt the ability of the movement to make real concrete change for her people. Many of the leaders of the Canton voter registration movement languished in jail and her people languished in the segregated South. The willingness of the whites to hold on to their racist attitudes, and her own people’s willingness to accept “We ain’t big enough to do it by ourselves” (p. 424), led her to doubt the ability for her people to overcome discrimination, as Anne responds to the chants of we shall overcome with “I wonder. I really wonder”(p. 424).
The Black Panther Party (BPP) was the radical group during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Under the leadership of Dr. Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, the Black Panther Party made their presence known wherever they went. With their militant and radical styles, the BPP was a group of people that most Americans were intimidated by. One of the main goals for the BPP was to stop police brutality from plaguing within the black community, and just like Civil Rights Movement leaders Malcolm X and Martin Luther King’s they wanted to have equal rights just like every other U.S citizens. Even their looks made them stand out from the rest of the black protest groups. Members of the BPP were known for having
The Black Panther Party were also a big concern for the government and targets in COINTELPRO due to the massive support they gained in their communities as they felt like they were being oppressed by the government and provided many activities for the neighborhood youth including free food and saturday morning class to teach Black History since at the time, no public school would want to teach it. The Black Panther Party had then director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover infamously called the group, “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country” and was one of the main supervisors involved with COINTELPRO which some members of the Black Panther Party became political prisoners, getting some type of blackmail to resist and suppress
The Black Panther Party was founded on October, 15, 1966 by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton in Oakland, California. This organization was a black revolutionary socialist party that was created to primarily protect African American neighborhoods from violent police brutality. In 1967, the party released and circulated its first newspaper, The Black Panther. Within the same year the organization also protested a ban on weapons in Sacramento on the California State Capitol. After becoming an icon of the 1960's counterculture, the Party was see in numerous cities throughout the nation, with record membership at 10,000 in 1969. Editor of The Black Panther, Eldridge Cleaver and his editorial committee created a document called the Ten-Point Program. This document was comprised of desired wants and needs for the black community, such as; freedom, employment, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. The Black Panthers expressed their injustices with their saying of, "What we Want, What we Believe". Not only did this document demand specific wants for the panthers, it was also a sign of hope and inspiration for the underprivileged blacks that lived in ghettos across the nation. With a strong passion to turn around the poor black communities, the Panthers installed a variety of community social programs that were made to improve several aspects of the inner city ghettos. Two of their most commonly known programs were its Free Breakfast for children program and its armed citizens patrol that made sure police officers behaved within their limit of power and to protect blacks who became victims of racist police brutality abuse. They also instituted a free medical care program and fought the common problem of young blacks using narco...
Massive protests against racial segregation and discrimination broke out in the southern United States that came to national attention during the middle of the 1950’s. This movement started in centuries-long attempts by African slaves to resist slavery. After the Civil War American slaves were given basic civil rights. However, even though these rights were guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment they were not federally enforced. The struggle these African-Americans faced to have their rights ...