Coming of Age in Mississippi. Anne Moodys memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi, portrays her life experiences and the troubles she faced growing up in Mississippi before and during the African-American civil rights movement.

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Alex Johnson

Hist 202

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Coming of Age in Mississippi

        The United States during the mid-twentieth century is often described as being a time of conformity and compliance.  However, it also represents a time in which the seeds of rebellion were being planted within American society.  As these seeds began to grow so too did the African-American civil rights movement in the United States.  Even though African-Americans had been granted their freedom following the Civil War and even gained the right to vote, they were still treated as second class citizens, especially in the South. Anne Moody’s memoir, “Coming of Age in Mississippi”, portrays her life experiences and the troubles she faced growing up in Mississippi before and during the African-American civil rights movement.

        Moody begins her memoir by reflecting on her rough childhood around the time that she was four years old.  Anne lived in a two bedroom shack with her mother, father, and younger sister on a plantation owned by a white man known as Mr. Carter.  Many other African-Americans also lived on this plantation and like Anne’s mother and father, they too were sharecroppers.  Sharecropping is defined as an agricultural system in which a land owner allows a tenant to use and live on their land in return for the tenant’s labor.  Following the Civil War and the emancipation of slaves, sharecropping became increasingly popular as a legal substitution for slavery.  Sharecropping represented one of very few options for newly freed African-Americans to support themselves and their families in the Jim Crow South.  Anne states that none of the shacks owned by African-Americans on the Carter’s plantation had electricity or indoor plumbing.  Like all of the African-American sharecroppers living on the Carter’s plantation, Anne and her family lived in impoverished conditions.  Anne’s parents would spend their days working in the fields from dawn till dusk.  While her parents were working in the fields, Anne’s eight year old uncle George watched over Anne and her younger sister Adline.  George constantly beat and tormented the girls while he watched over them.  One day, George was playing with matches and burned the house to the ground.  He told Anne’s father that Anne had started the fire and she received a harsh beating.  “Daddy must have beaten me a good ten minutes before Mama realized he had lost his senses and came to rescue me.” (10)    Anne’s father begins a gambling habit and eventually has an affair with a lighter skinned African-American woman named Florence.  Anne’s mother moves the family off of the plantation and eventually settles in Centreville.  By the time Anne is in fourth grade, she begins working after school to help support her family.  Even though much of her free time is being spent devoted to work, Anne manages to excel in school, begins to play basketball, and is even elected homecoming queen.  Despite the hardships she faced during her childhood, Anne is not discouraged.  As an African-American child growing up in the South, Anne is clueless to why white people are seen as superior to African-Americans and eventually realizes that there is no good reason.

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        In part two of her memoir, Anne is entering high school and first learns of the death of Emmitt Till.  Emmitt Till was a fourteen year old African-American boy from Chicago who was visiting Mississippi.  The boy allegedly whistled at a white woman and was lynched because of it.  The news of this infuriates Anne and sparks her political awakening.  “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)  For the first ...

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