Analysis Of Coming Of Age In Mississippi By Anne Moody

In the book Coming of Age in Mississippi, author Anne Moody tells her life story growing up in the American South and how her experiences lead to her becoming a civil rights activist during the Civil Rights Movement. She grew up on a plantation, in a community of sharecroppers. Her parents worked as sharecroppers, and after her father left the family with another woman, Anne, her mother, and her siblings move to various houses in six years. While her mom got a waitress and maid job, their family still suffered in poverty. They usually ate food such as bread and beans, which Toosweet brought home from the restaurant. Despite these circumstances, Anne did very well in her academics. She also got a job while in school working for white families.

In the article, “ ‘They Are Ancestral Homelands: Race, Place, and Politics in Cold War Native America, 1945-1961’”, author Paul C. Rosier, focuses on how during the Cold War Era, Native Americans used Cold War rhetoric and ideologies to fight back against programs designed against their sovereignty and their rights. It was the participation of many Native American troops during the Second World War, which led to a call for change. They had supported the war effort largely and expected to be given the privileges and benefits they deserved. However, with the large amount of American aid being used in the European Recovery Program, many Native Americans saw this as wrong, because their people were starving back home. With this criticism, President Harry Truman decided to seek Congress’s approval “to provide emergency relief to the Navajo and the Hopi; Truman hoped that such aid forecloses those who would criticize my foreign aid program on the ground that we are letting our First Americans starve”. The Congress approved of the funds and was sent in 1947. Three years later more would be sent with approximately $88,000,000 as part of the Navajo-Hopi Rehabilitation Act. There were also private charities that helped the Navajo. During the fifties there was still talk of termination which was an assimilation process to bring Native Americans into the mainstream of society. While politicians debated over it and proposed bills, Native American representatives went to Washington D.C. to speak against the bills. There were also representatives from the National Congress of American Indians, including their president Joseph Garry who spoke in favor of reservations. As Garry stated, “Reservations do not imprison us. They are ancestral homelands, retained by us for our perpetual use and enjoyment. We must assert our right to maintain ownership in our own way and to terminate it only by our