Coming of Age

Ruth Wubishet

Hour 7

February 15, 2007

Anne Moody was born Essie May Moody in 1940. She grew up in Wilkerson County , a rural county in extreme poverty and racism. Her parents spent time working on plantations until her father, Didly, left the family. Her mother, Toosweet, trying to keep the family together works as a maid for different white families. Coming of Age in Mississippi, covers nineteen years of Anne’s life, from when she was four until she was twenty-three years old.

Just as the civil rights movement was maturing in the 1950s, so was Anne. She matures to become an independent young woman. She also was becoming more aware of racial inequalities in her county. Anne first hears about the NAACP, when Emmet Till, a fourteen year old boy is brutally murdered. Toosweet and her family don’t seem to understand Anne’s ambitions. When Anne was graduating from high school in the late 1950s, the government had encouraged the idea of integrating the Black schools into a new, better building. Anne, however, wasn’t satisfied until they had integrated both black and white schools. When Anne graduated from college her family didn’t go to the ceremony, in fear of their lives, since she was involved in the civil rights movement. Anne’s conflict with her family is one of the most universal aspects of Coming of Age in Mississippi .

Through the course of this book there were three main themes that took place: food, skin color, and prejudice. This book relates to our study in American History class because it illustrates the difficult times that African-Americans had to go through to get to where they are today. It was through the demonstrations, sit-ins, and pray-ins of the NAACP and CORE that Black people were able to win their freedom. The themes of this book show specific examples of how blacks suffered during the civil rights movement.

Food was one of the themes because Anne often used it to remind the reader of the extreme poverty she was growing up in. Most of the time her family lived on a paycheck to paycheck type of life style. On most days they simply ate nothing but bread and beans. Sometimes they would be fortunate enough to get leftover food from the white people Toosweet worked for. Food illustrates the wealth that black peopled lacked compared to whites. Anne’s family had to survive on the white Cook family leftovers. Anne’s mother steals corn from the Cook’s yard to keep her family from starving. During this time in our history blacks were not slaves, but they weren’t middle-class families either. In order to survive everyone in the family had to chip in some money to pay for food, clothing, and whatever else was needed. Anne felt like it was her duty to help her single mother out at a very young age to help provide for her younger siblings.

Skin color was also another major theme in this book I