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Essay on Coming of Age in Mississippi
Anne Moody was an important character in the role of social reform for Africa Americans in Mississippi. Her will to change people and desire for a better life for African Americans was based on the problems and difficulties she faced when she was a child growing up in Centreville, Mississippi.Written by Ms. Moody when she was twenty eight, it is a damning portrait of what life was like for African-Americans in the Deep South. It tells of parallel lifestyles that were preordained and dependent upon whether one were black or one were white (Gale's, 2003).
Anne Moody recounts growing up black and describes the horror of finding her name on a Klan "wanted" list and seeing a black child beaten as FBI agents languidly watched from a short distance. According to Anne’s view if one were black, one was destined to a lifetime of poverty, because job opportunities were limited to bottom of the rung jobs with no opportunity for growth and which were designed by their very nature to keep one subservient. It tells of schools so substandard as to make one non-competitive in the larger world. It tells of dilapidated and ramshackle housing without indoor plumbing that was the lot of many blacks in the rural south.
Anne describes the fear that was palpable in ones every day life, if one were black; a fear of making a white person angry, because the consequences that would follow could end up costing one dearly. It sums up the daily indignities which were a part pf growing up black in the rural south in the mid twentieth century (Gale's, 2003). It is a story of frustration and anger at the inequities found in every day living. It is the story of how one young woman dealt with that system and survived......
