Abstract

Moody considered herself more of a civil rights activist than a writer, but Coming of Age in Mississippi provided its readers with a significant new perspective on the turbulent years of the Civil Rights movement. Moody was the first to write from within the society of those needing the help: the undereducated, disenfranchised, tenant farmers whose livelihood depended on staying in the good graces of the white population. Hers was the most direct voice of the most oppressed rural African Americans, not coming from the wealthy or middle classes of Martin Luther King, Jr., or W. E. B. Du Bois. She also made it possible for readers to see her fellows' horrific living conditions and growing anger through the eyes of a child, as she detailed the grinding poverty, the backbreaking labor, the violence, and the hunger amid which she grew up.

Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody

Introduction

Moody's autobiography Coming of Age in Mississippi is more than just the story of a young woman's transitions into adulthood. It is the chronicle of a brave young woman who refuses to sacrifice her self-respect, a woman who stands up for her beliefs, despite great personal cost. The final words of her personal account mirror the frustration of such taxing work. As she sits listening to her friends singing, "We shall overcome," she responds: "I wonder. I really wonder." One has to wonder how such vision, such courage, carried Moody in her journey, and if she, like many of us, is still wondering today.

Discussion

Moody's political activism took a different path. While she also became a writer, she first committed herself to trying to create change in the African-American community. Moody was in college during the 1960s, a decade when the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was about to achieve some of its goals. Inspired by one of the NAACP's most outstanding speakers, Medgar Evans, Moody took part in a sit-in at a whites-only lunch counter in Jackson, Mississippi.

She was assaulted by a group of white hecklers who quickly gathered at the scene, while white police offices stood outside watching a scene of law enforcement passivity that repeated many times. This was the first of many such acts of defiance against the Jim Crow laws in which Moody was involved. Jackson, Mississippi, was soon the subject of national attention as groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC) ...