Anne Moody

In this autobiography of Anne Moody a.k.a. Essie Mae as she is often called in the book, is the struggles for rights that poor black Americans had in Mississippi. Things in her life lead her to be such an activist in the fight for black equality during this time. She had to go through a lot of adversity growing up like being beat, house being burned down, moving to different school, and being abuse by her mom’s boyfriend. One incident that would make Anne Moody curious about racism in the south was the incident in the Movie Theater with the first white friends she had made. The other was the death of Emmett Tillman and other racial incidents that would involve harsh and deadly circumstances. These this would make Miss Moody realize that this should not be tolerated in a free world.

First time she ever accounts racism was at the Movie Theater, before she had even realized what it was. This incident made her start questioning what racism was and what made blacks and whites different. In Centreville, Mississippi where she lived with her mother and a sister (Adline) and brother (Junior). In Centreville they meet two other kids that just had happened to be white. Essie Mae had never been a friend with white kids. The two white children Katie and Bill would always ride their bikes and skates in front of Essie Mae yard. So they got their attention on one afternoon by making Indian noises to draw them to play with the others. Katie and Bill would let Essie ride their bikes and skates all the time, the others where too young to let them try. So they would grow a close relationship not knowing what others might think of these two groups playing. Every Saturday Essie’s mother would always take them to the movies, where the blacks would have to seat in the balcony and whites could seat in the bottom level. But they saw Katie and Bill there so Essie and her bother and sister followed them to the bottom level. While mother was not noticing what was going on, when mother noticed she began to start yelling and pulling them out the door. The children begun to cry this would make mom just leave the Movie Theater. On the way home those night Essie’s mothers keep telling them how they could not do this or that with white children. Katie and Bill after the movie thing happened never played with them again. This incident put thoughts in young Essie Mae’s head. This made her do a lot of thinking about white.

“Now all of a sudden they were white, and their whiteness made them better than me. I now realized that not only were they better than me because they were white, but everything they owned and everything connected with them was better than what was available to me” (pg. 34)

She would now notice that everything that had was better from the school, homes, sidewalks and even bathrooms. She could not stop trying to reveal the secret between blacks and whites. She even would play doctor with other little children because Mae thought that black and white organs and or privates made the difference. This incident was big in which it first opened her eyes to racism and that people were treated different. It was not such perniciousness moment in her life but it would later lead to some that will change her life.

Then next is not really one incident it is more like a calibration of things that evolves around the same sort of things. That is the mistreatment of black people by whites with brutal force like killing, lynching, and even burning down their homes.

The first of many was the death of the fourteen year old Emmett Till. He was a young man that had whistled at a white lady and later Emmett Till was found dead by a river. The boy was from Chicago were things are different than they are in the south.

“A boy from Mississippi would have known better than that. The boy was from Chicago. Negroes up North have no respect for people. They think they can get away with anything” pg. (132)

This stirred up many questions that Essie Mae had for her mother on why he dissevered that. The only thing mother had to offer was to act like she did not know anything. This gave Essie Mae a different king of fever in her life, the fever that she could be killed just for being black. Another thing that was the person she worked for at the time some of things terrible things were going on. Mrs. Burke the meanest women in town of Centreville. She had racism in her blood, often making Essie Mae feel terrible and scared. Often worrying always what Mrs. Burke thought about her and if she would have her hurt. Essie Mae was great in school always making the best grades, so often tutored white kids sometimes older kids, Mrs. Burke son was one of them. Mrs. Burke did not like a Negro being the teacher of a white. Once when asked the question of she thought school should be integrated for blacks and whites. Essie Mae gave an honest answer stating