Coming of Age in Mississippi

Anne Moody, in her autobiography Coming of Age in Mississippi, argues that, despite the overwhelming bigotry of the South, the individual black American can find strength and courage within herself and with others to fight against and overcome that bigotry. Southern bigotry is described in the book in many ways, but Essie May is able to resist the despair and resignation which could have easily been her lot, and to rise above her situation to become a proud and hopeful member of the civil rights movement. The message is clearly that if oppressed people can organize and plan such resistance to bigotry, then that bigotry can indeed be overcome.

What gives this theme its unique power is the attitude of Moody to her life and the material in her book. In the first place, she never feels sorry for herself or tries to persuade the reader to feel sorry for her. What this does is give credence to her courageous involvement in the civil rights movement. From the beginning we see that courage, even when she is a little girl and is left alone with a few beans to care for herself and her sister. We are shown that early on she possessed the courage which would find full expression later in her life.

In the second place, Moody refuses to idealize the struggle for civil rights and individual dignity in the face of bigotry and oppression. In the concluding pages, we see her as a down-to-earth woman who has no false expectations about any perfect society which might arise out of the movem

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manity, her ability to feel and think honestly and clearly about herself and her environment. The reader becomes involved with Moody's story because she is admirable but not idealized or romanticized. She is a real woman in a real world, full of injustice and mercy, murder and compassion, good people and bad people and every sort in between. Her political story is intimately intertwined with her personal story, with, for example, her frightened mother continually barraging her with pleas to be more careful in dealing with violent bigots. In this world, Moody shows that there are no pure victories of good over evil, justice over bigotry. Even as she prepares to go to Washington to testify on behalf of the civil rights movement, she is torn with doubt and a hint of despair at what she has experienced in her life. She is determined not to leave the reader thinking that the civil rights movement has achieved anything like a final victory. She shows herself as a dedicated individual who will do what she believes to be right, even in the face of great opposition and danger, but at the same time she is not living in a dream world of false expectations. She knows that there is no guarantee that justice will triumph in a bigoted and viol

Category: Literature - C