Racism and Injustice are terms that individuals in today’s society don’t fully understand. In order to understand something, you must first be educated upon it. In Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody, the author uses amazing descriptive details to explain the hardships of a young African American female in the late 1940’s. The main character Essie Ma, later known as Anne, daughter of Toosweet Davis and Diddly Moody is raised on a plantation with her siblings Junior and Adline. The book is split into four different sections of Essie Ma’s life childhood, high school, college, and the movement. Anne Moody invokes two major themes in her work when writing Coming of Age in Mississippi, racism and poverty. Each section of Essie’s life has …show more content…
The turning point for her was truly the killing of Emmitt Till. Emmitt was said to be killed for looking incorrectly at a Caucasian female walking down the street and was found severely beaten later that night. Essie felt the need to change her name to Anne in an attempt to avoid discrimination because of her name. At this point the connection to modern day really stood out. In today’s day and time young black children are murder in broad day light and the murders are constantly said to be mistakes or the individuals who kill them say they have reason for the killing when they really do not. It is concerning to see how the author set this story back in the 1940’s and yet young African Americans are dying for no reason. After reading this book I am truly grateful for the opportunities that I have been granted in my life because even though I have to compete with hundreds of people all over the world in order to gain access to things at least I don’t have to deal with physical or obvious racial abuse. Being an African American female in the 1940’s had to be horrible, by the age I was five I was able to play with my friends of all races and even made more than two nickels cutting