Coming Of Age Critical Analysis.docx

Ethan Bennett HIST 17C Carlos Mujal Coming of Age in Mississippi Critical Analysis “Just do your work like you don’t know nothing,” says Anna’s Mama regarding the horrific death of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago. Anna repeats this phrase in her head but it doesn’t do much to help her not think about it. Her Mama urges her not to speak of the murder around her white employers and certainly not the word NAACP which Anna heard while she was eavesdropping. Unbeknownst to Anna, this event spurred her onto joining the NAACP and began her journey fighting for Negro rights across the nation. The story of Coming of Age in Mississippi chronicles the life of Anne Moody, known at birth as Essie Mae Moody. The book spans the formative period of the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi and the protests and marches across the nation, all written in Anne Moody’s perspective. She writes of her experiences joining the NAACP and eventually settling down in Mississippi forming the CORE. It is important to note that there is little to no statistics here in this book; what comprises it is mostly of experiences and the views of the oppressed. Raw data does not influence the movement or cause in any way for there is no way of crunching hatred and racism into data. Moody depends primarily on her surroundings and writes down her thoughts and feelings growing up in a tumultuous time in her life. Like most books and autobiographies written during the civil rights movement, it is a depiction of racism and violence towards blacks during the 1890s all the way to the 1960s. What makes the autobiography worth remembering

and reading is that not only is it a black person writing it, it is a black woman no less; at the time even women weren’t allowed basic privileges men had and so had to fight for their rights as well. Coming of Age in Mississippi is broken into four parts: Childhood, High School, College, The Movement. Over the course of the autobiography, it is made abundantly clear that the central themes of Moody’s work is her frustration, alienation, and doubt with the civil rights movement. Starting with the latter, in parts 1 and 2 of her autobiography, Anne Moody is learning the trials of racism in American South. Even though she believes that when all the goals are clear and the reformers united, it still is not easy to make change come faster and to make a better world. Anne Moody regards the Woolwoth sit-ins in chapter 8 as a resistance to change a sickness to which there may be no cure after all. She learns eventually that the movement wants to radically reconstruct a government that allows black people the same right as white people, starting with sit-ins and advocating non-violence. Through it all however, Anne struggles to see the purpose of nonviolence after a Baptist church is bombed in Alabama. However, in her family, she is faced with an oppression she wishes to be free from. Moody’s Mama has lived under the Jim Crow laws for so long that she has long since give up changing it and instructs her children to instead obey and follow suit. She instead wishes to keep the white’s approval of her instead of fighting to be seen as equal to them, an American worthy of dignity, respect, and rights. Moody points out the fact that some blacks are either too trapped or “brainwashed” by white supremacy to seek any freedom of their own. She also writes of black authority figures like pastors and principals will turn on other black in order to “keep the peace”. If there are any talks between black movement leaders and white authorities, the progress is painstakingly slow. Moody learns of the systems and habits that must be changed to combat the doubts in herself and in her fellow people.

Her frustrations come in the form of her family’s brainwashed acceptance of the laws white people implemented on them and how they accept their “inferiorities”, the brutalities of the whites on black people marching in non-violent protests, and also the frustration of black authorities who turn on fellow black people to keep the white people satisfied. An example of blacks turning on blacks come in the form of her quote in Chapter 4: “They were Negroes and we were also Negroes. I just didn’t see Negroes hating each other so much.” This is in regards with Raymond’s family and especially their mother, Miss Pearl. Because they were lighter-skinned than most African-Americans, they looked down upon Anne’s family and also other blacks who do not share a lighter complexion. Additionally, their being light-skinned helped them aspire to higher social status and place among the whites even though they shared many similarities with the struggles and oppressions of their fellow blacks. This very fact that that black make further distinctions between themselves leads Moody to believe that there is a greater need for unity. During her college years in Tougaloo College, Moody herself faced discrimination in the “high yellow” or “mulatto” student population. She becomes even more suspicious of the treatment she receives from the mulattos and eventually she herself becomes prejudiced towards them. However, it was during this time that she joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). As a result of her joining, this caused further divides in her family because it put her family at risk. Later on, she joined the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and the Congress on Racial Equality and even participated in the Woolworth sit-ins. Her activism put her under constant surveillance and threats from white authorities and the Ku Klux Klan. More of her frustrations also come with her coming-of-age in the middle of all the movements. She undergoes a spiritual doubt and a crisis of faith and starts to question why the

world would remain so calm and quiet while her people suffer. Though she may have succeeded in her education and escaped her childhood, her experiences from then still haunt her. More importantly, Moody has to choose between following what society has imposed on her or taking the risk to be the captain of her own life or as she put it in part 4, chapter 25: “I will be my own God, living my life as I see it.” Her alienation comes in the latter part of her life where, after all the movements and rallies she’s been to, after all the incarceration and violent treatment she received, she gives up some of her associations and returns to Mississippi, gaining a release of emotions through her writing which we read right now. After realizing and believing that the fight against racism and white supremacy would not be easily won with her still in the movements, she turns back on her faith and says “A world this evil…should be black, blind, and deaf, and without any feelings”, airing out her thoughts of a world that saw no color. Her conclusion to the book however is not one of hopelessness and disappointment. At a CORE march, the older adults started breaking out in spiritual song and lifted everyone’s moods. To Moody, she is comforted by the fact that the singers are black, the song is spiritual and the singing does not hearken back to days of old and days of slavery but rather points towards a new hope for black people and their true goal of attaining equality.