A Review of Coming of Age in Mississippi, a Book by Anne Moody

Coming of age in Mississippi was a book written by Anne Moody. The book covers Moody’s life from childhood through to her involvement in the civil rights movement. Her autobiography details her struggles against racism and sexism. In this analysis, I shall be looking ta chapter 22 of her book. Chapter 22 is in part 4 of her book where she starts to describe the movement and her full-scale involvement in the struggle for civil rights.

Coming of age in Mississippi was an autobiography written by Anne Moody during the 1960’s and published in 1968, towards the end of the civil rights movement. Anne Moody was a civil rights activist born in 1940, born and raised in Mississippi. She was involved in the civil rights movement through the NAACP, CORE and SNCC. She had fought racism and segregation from a young age and then go involved during her college years. Anne Moody was a unique figure to the civil rights movement as she held a direct voice of the oppressed rural blacks. The audience of the source would have been young people and people who weren’t aware of the issues in the south.

The audience would have affected the source to a historian in shaping our understanding of the period because she would have been writing to expose the issues to the audience and only the one side would have been highlighted in the book. Moody’s writing throughout the source is subjective. The chapter is full of her opinions and personal feelings of the protests in Mississippi and certain people involved. Moody’s intellectual background might have affected the source. Moody earned an academic scholarship to Tougaloo college, graduating in 1964. This notable education would have affected the way she wrote the source as she was a smart woman whose skills would have known how to write and it would have made this source more effective in her description of the events which transpired. Her social-political background would have similarly affected how the source was written.

Moody was from a poor background and her hatred of white people grew from an early age after the murder of Emmet Till. His murder had a profound impact on her and the anger this made her feel set the stage for her later activism and this book. The audience at the time of publication saw this book more as a social commentary rather than a literary piece and the exposé of racism in the south. The expectations of the audience would have been to learn more about the experiences of people in the south and how the NAACP ran the protests. This would have affected her focus of writing within the source as she wanted to include everything but also not give too much of the mechanisms away. The functions of the source are to give light of the experiences during the protesting. She would want to emphasise the struggles of the civil rights movement and racism in general. The context of this source is useful in shaping the way we understand the period.

Chapter 22 of Moody’s book ‘coming of age in Mississippi’ is in part 4 of the book which is about her full-scale involvement within the civil rights movement. Moody describes her participation in various events during the chapter, including sit ins at the Woolworths lunch counter and pray ins on the steps of the local post office. She gives her experiences in countless detail and the reader can gain much knowledge from this. Chapter 22 highlights many issues which can help the reader and historians alike understand the period.

One of the most interesting sentences in this source is when she talks about her own feelings on the movement, she states ‘It no longer seemed important to prove anything. I had found something outside myself that gave me meaning to life’. This is relevant to understanding the period as it shows us how important and involved she was in the movement. After an already difficult upbringing, including poverty. She is now content being an activist. She is passionate in her drive to fight for racial equality and a group where she feels accepted for the first time since her early childhood. This provides us with why activists like Anne were so passionate about the movement and the rewards they get from being a part of it. Another part of the content which is relevant to us understanding the period was her hatred of white population.

Moody grew a hatred for white people since the murder of Emmet Till. This is reiterated in this chapter when she quotes, ‘the whites have a disease, an incurable disease”. This helps our understanding of the period as a historian as we can gain the views of many African Americans in the south. Th believed white people would kill to protect their way of life.

After the abuse and violence of the sit in and the crimes Moody has seen in a first-hand experience it is not surprising she has this view. It shows us how bad the racism was in the south and how racial inequality wasn’t changing despite the avid protesters efforts. Her views of white people also show her struggle to overcome social inequality. The serious tone of writing shows us how passionate Moody was about the movement. How important she felt change was. It shows us the gravity of the movements and how important change for racial and social inequality in the south was for many people. The content of this source is valuable to historians in heling us understand the period.

This book can be a valuable source to a historian and we can use it in many ways, especially chapter 22. A historian could use this source when observing the themes of the period. The themes of the chapter primarily focus upon racism and the struggle to overcome social inequality. Historians can gather so much valuable information just by reading Moody’s experience. Woman like Moody’s lives were shaped by the racial discrimination and prejudice that all African Americans faced during the period. Historians can use Moody’s experiences to demonstrate the problems of the period. They can use it to support any arguments they may have around the period.

Historians can use this source to further discover who was involved in the movements during the civil rights movement. Students were involved in a huge number of the protests in Mississippi. As Moody describes, ‘four hundred high school students had also been arrested”3, historians can use this to answer the question why students were so important to the development of the civil rights movement. The use of student for the protests was important as they joined the movements to shape their futures and open a world of opportunities the generations before them didn’t receive. Historians can also use this source to try and understand why some black people just accepted the injustice. Not all black people were involved in the protests.

Moody’s relationship with her family in Centreville, Mississippi deteriorated due to her involvement. This made her angry and she couldn’t understand why they just accepted this treatment and injustice. One potential problem a historian may encounter in using the source is because this source is written in a subjective tone it could be unreliable as her writing is too subjective. The interpretations a historian could take from this source could be affected by this writing as she obviously feels passionate about the subject so she may have bent the truth to get the reader to react more and reignite the civil rights movement. As she’s talking about her own experiences her own personal feelings about certain people may come in. Although Anne concludes that the movement has not improved the lives of people in Mississippi and there was a long way to go before change would occur.

Overall Anne Moody’s book ‘Coming of age in Mississippi is a valuable primary source to historians when shaping our understanding of the period. The source discusses many key themes like racism and injustice within society. The historian can gather plenty of information and knowledge from the content of this source. The source is significant and the context is also useful to historians. Although this source is just a snippet of the civil rights movement, it provides the reader with the vision of what it was like during the period for black people and what and why they were protesting for.