When we hear the word civil rights we think of the civil rights movement. What comes to mind Martin Luther king Jr. The million man march, the infamous words free at last free at last. The memories of the atrocities suffered by Blacks in America over the last 200 years going right back to the founding fathers of America. The pacifism of Martin L. King and the militancy of Malcom X Ann Moody publishes her autobiography. Coming of age is an intimately tell the life of an African American woman living, working and existing in Racist America. It also points to the fact that Racism is in the very fabric of American history and society. This is something even a black president cant change.
Born Essie Mae or Anne Moody was born into a poor family working the fields of a white farmer typical of many black families in the south. What is particularly striking is the conditions in which Ann’s family lives are almost exactly the same as those before the emancipation proclamation. They lived in a wooden shack on the side of a cotton plantation. Her parents work the either in the masters’ house or in the cotton field. Poverty meant that she has to work after school to help support the family. The African Americans, "the south" live in a state of perpetual fear of the whites like they had done for the past 200 years. There was no mixing between the races. A Black man found looking at or even whistling a white woman he could be lynched. “Emmett Till’s murder had proved it was a crime, punishable by death, for a Negro man to even whistle at a white woman in Mississippi.” "Coming” They suffered insult, harassment and humiliation. Mechanization of cotton brought high unemployment amongst blacks which ultimately lead them to crime to survive. This deep poverty is best seen by her description of the food they ate. They ate bread and beans on an off day or even the scraps of the table of the whites cook.
The whites maintained their strong hold over the blacks through their segregation laws. Segregation laws were a form of quarantine to stop the inferiority of blacks from infecting whites. These laws are what held back the blacks in everything they did. This meant that blacks could not get higher paying jobs, as opposed to white employees. They were relegated to doing jobs whites would not do. In the book, this is reason they were in the poverty trap. Moody woke up to the difference between blacks and white when she went to the movies. “Their whiteness provided them with a pass to downstairs in that nice section and my blackness sent me to the balcony. I was thinking about it and their schools, homes, and streets were better than mine.” "Coming” This made her not hates but despise whites with exceedingly persuasive reason. Though some land mark cases had been won toward equality the reality is that nothing much had changed.
It was not only whites she began to hate she began to hate blacks as well for their complacency. She hates there in action and fearfulness. She sympathized with their plight it touched her because she lived it as well. An outstanding example was when an entire family was burned to death in their own home. Such was the situation that she left the south due to the horrid situation. What is sad is that though things have changed the south is still the home and center of white supremacy.
However the president is black and attitudes are changing and racism is being defeated. There is one thing that is particularly striking when reading the book. One question lingers in my mind. What did blacks do to deserve this kind of treatment that has not ended? I can understand why a Jew would always have misgivings about a German. The Holocaust scared them for generations. However what did the black man ever due to the white man?
References:
"Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody." 123HelpMe.com. 18 Apr 2012
SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Coming of Age in Mississippi.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2006. Web. 16 Apr. 2012.
