In Anne Moody’s autobiography, Coming of Age in Mississippi, she discusses the hardships that “negroes” faced during a time when segregation was prevalent. Anne Moody, or Essie Mae, as she was often referred to in the book, was a black rights activist. Certain events lead her to be such a strong advocate for African Americans. Her first memory of being separated from white people was at the movie theatre. Children were the last to see color, so they did not realize how sternly the segregation was enforced. Moody ran into the white lobby with her friends when her mom was not looking. When her mom saw her and her sister in the white lobby, she yelled and dragged them out. “When we got outside, we stood there crying, and we could hear the white children crying inside the white lobby.” (p. 64). Moody even wrote that after this experience, her mom stopped bringing them to the movies. …show more content…
“Now all of a sudden they were white, and their whiteness made them better than me. I now realized that not only were they better than me because they were white, but everything they owned and everything connected with them was better than what was available to me.” (p. 66). She began to notice the different water faucets, bathrooms, and other things of that nature. The color of a person’s skin began to matter in ways that it had never mattered to Moody before. This was her first big eye