Tiffany Jones April 17, 2017 Coming of Age in Mississippi By Anne Moody “Coming of Age in Mississippi” Response Paper Women in the south that participated in the civil rights movement were underappreciated. You only hear of a few women activists such as Rosa Parks or Angela Davis. The ones you don’t hear about are the women who was influenced by the civil rights movement as a child or was a poor black activist. Anne Moody (Essie Mae) is a former civil rights activist and an African-American author. Moody writes her autobiography Coming of Age in Mississippi, which is about her experience of being a black woman in the south and talks about her involvement in civil rights organizations. Anne Moody …show more content…
Riot is a term used to talk about a mass of people causing violent outburst or destruction. The students at Lanier High School demonstrated a pray-in and when they wouldn’t leave, the principal called it a riot. Her development in the civil rights movement is like other activist because of experience. They had some type of discrimination happen to them but instead of letting it happen they did something about it. Moody was exposed to violence towards blacks and discrimination at a young age. When blacks were being killed, and dumped in the river, when Moody was seven, she thought of the people killing them as an ‘evil spirit’. “It took me eight years to learn what the spirit was,” (Moody, 121) The spirit was white people, there were killing because of the color of negro’s skin. Moody knew it was dangerous to be black but she didn’t know it was even more dangerous to be black and from the North. Moody learned something from Emmitt Till tragic death, he was a kid from Chicago who didn’t really know the rules of the South. He was killed for whistling at a white woman. Moody then realized that she can be killed for being black and this bothered her for days. His death sent a message to blacks that’s they were to stay in their place or they will be dealt with. It set off a domino effect because more beatings happened and houses burned with black folks in it. Moody realized what being black in the 1950’s