Anne Moody's Coming Of Age In Mississippi

Superior Essays
Anne Moody is a vital character to discuss when talking about Citizenship and how it changed and evolved during the time of her life. Anne Moody grew up in Mississippi as the daughter of a sharecropper. She and her family lived on the Carter’s plantation, Moody was born on September 15, 1940. The autobiography, Coming of Age in Mississippi, follows Moody from age four until after college, when she has become a civil rights activist. Anne is from the town of Centreville, Mississippi, a town that was extremely poor and was marked by the racism surrounding it. Anne grew to join CORE and the NAACP. In the 1940’s through 1960’s, Anne was a part of several different demonstrations, the most famous probably being the Woolworth’s sit in. During this …show more content…
Separate but Equal was roaring in this time. White Americans didn’t see it as a problem, of course, because they didn’t have to deal with the bad consequences. There was nothing that was put up about keeping white people out of anywhere, it was specifically for African Americans and in many cases Mexicans. What was used to define citizenship during this time was race. White people, specifically upper middle and upper class white men, had completely uninterrupted citizenship. The way citizenship was defined was not only if you were white or black, but there was a citizenship hierarchy among the African American community. Anne Moody experienced this many times throughout her life, other African Americans would judge her and her family because they were darker skinned. African Americans with lighter skin had more citizenship among the black community than their darker skinned counterparts. This is another point to bring up because racism was not strictly between black people and white people. There was racism among most …show more content…
As one could expect, white culture and white supremacy was definitely reflected in pop culture. People of color were seen as inferior and that’s the way the media wanted to keep it. Groups that would give people of color a voice, such as the NAACP and CORE were demonized in the media, further severing African Americans’ chances at achieving full citizenship. Anne Moody worked to change this, chipping away slowly at the boulder that blocked citizenship for black people. One of the most famous demonstrations that Anne was a part of is still talked about as being so important to the citizenship of African Americans, Woolsworth’s lunch counter. This is where Anne Moody, as well as another group of activists, sat at the Whites Only lunch counter and demanded service. They were harassed and assaulted while Moody and other participants sat and stayed polite, and the most important part is that it was the most publicized sit in the movement had seen. Because of the violence that took place, there was a shift, a recognition that maybe what was happening wasn’t what should be

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