Introduction
In 1965, Anne “Essie Mae” Moody, published her autobiography The Coming of Age in Mississippi, that detailed the harsh social, economic, and political situations that Southern blacks experienced from the 1940s to the mid-1960s. The book follows Anne’s childhood, high school, college and Civil Rights Movement experiences. It is her story, her life that exemplifies racial socialization of black families in the south. The Coming of Age in Mississippi exhibits racial socialization, racial stratification, personality development, and skepticism. Moody’s autobiography emphasizes the impact of socialization and racial consciousness of blacks in the South before and during the civil rights movement.
Summary
We are introduced to four-year-old Anne Moody living with her mother, father, and sister in a “rotten two-room shack” on a plantation owned by a white farmer (1). While the Moody’s were living on the plantation, out of anger Anne’s cousin George Lee set the shack on fire, her father’s best friend Bush was killed, and he was having an affair with a “high yellow” woman named Florence (9). After Anne’s mother and father separated they had moved six times until her mother settled with Raymond, a yellow man and the father of Anne’s brother junior, who built a house for the family in Centerville, Mississippi. At nine-years-old, Anne began supporting her family by working as a maid after school to help feed her family who before only survived on beans and left-overs from white families.
In high school, Anne worked for Mrs. Burke, a white supremacist, and helped tutor her son and clean the house. While working at Mrs. Burke’s, Anne overheard from Mrs. Burke’s “Guild meeting” about the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) (131). Anne asked her mother what the NAACP and her mother threatens Anne to never speak about the NAACP. Mrs. Burke would relentlessly try to “instill fear” and “subdue” Anne’s from acting out against whites like how Emmet Till did (130). Emmett Till was fourteen-years-old when he was murdered in Mississippi after being accused of whistling at a white woman. After a few years, Anne quit working for Mrs. Burke after she accused Junior of being a thief.
At school and in Centerville, Anne was constantly checked out by white men and her classmates. Her mother would warn her about how white men would prey and seduce negro women. During the school year, to escape her mother’s scrutiny and judgment of her inquisitiveness, Anne would keep herself busy by attending school, working after school, and taking piano lessons. During the summers, Anne moved to New Orleans to work. After graduating from high school, Anne is offered a basketball scholarship at Natchez College, an “Uncle Tom” junior college, and later transfers to Tougaloo College. At Tougaloo College, she becomes active in the NAACP and the Coalition for the Organization of Racial Equality (CORE) where she participates in the civil rights movement by canvassing to register blacks to vote. In the book, Moody recalls times where she or other activists have been threatened by white supremacists through blacklists, spying, and violence. Moody’s mother disapproved her activity with the NAACP and CORE and begged her to quit because it threatened blacks in her hometown of Centerville. Anne eventually gets tired of working for the Movement because she does not see how anything has changed in black lives. Registering blacks to vote was not the answer. Anne’s story ends with her on a bus to Washington D.C. with young activists ready to overcome and fix issues black issues in the South. Pessimistically, Anne wonders if the Movement will “git things straight” (422).
Analysis
After Moody’s mother separated from her father, the family moved to Centreville, Mississippi and lived across from a white family with two children that would ride their bikes around the neighborhood. Anne would play with the white children, Katie and Bill, in their playhouse and learn how to ride their bikes. After playing with Katie and Bill, Anne would beg her mother to buy her skates so she could play with the kids. But because her family was extremely poor, she never received the skates. Fortunately, during the weekends, Anne’s mother would take the Anne, Junior, and Adeline to the movie theaters. One Saturday, Anne saw Katie and Bill at the movie theater and ran towards them to greet them in the downstairs lobby of the theater. Then, Anne did not notice she ran into the white lobby. Anne’s mother found her in the lobby and pulled her out of the theater. Her mother was lecturing Anne on how she was not allowed to be in the downstairs section of the theater or have friendly relationships with white children. At the time, Anne did not understand why she could not play with Katie or Bill or why she went to separated school from them. Anne reflects,
“I had never really thought of them as white before. Now all of a sudden they were white, and their whiteness made them better than me…everything they owned and everything connected with them was better than what was available to me… Their whiteness provided them with a pass to downstairs in that nice section and my blackness sent me to the balcony.” (31)
Anne’s mother limited the information that Anne received about the oppression of blacks in the South. She emphasized the social stratifications of race by intimidating and making Anne feel different from the white children. Anne’s mother’s reaction to Anne’s relationship with the white children reflect how she copes with her own oppressive experiences and how she socializes her children to be prepared for possible discrimination. Before the movie incident, Anne was socialized to accept oppression, and therefore, she was unaware of most of her oppressions. The movie incident sparked Anne’s curiosity of the racial distinctions between black, white, and yellow.
Anne did not understand how she was different from Katie and Bill. She thought they may be different because of the insides of the ears and mouths, blood, or genitals. But after simulating a game of “The Doctor,” she did not find her answer. She wondered, “If it wasn’t the straight hair and the white skin that made you white, then was it?” (33).
Anne also questioned Raymond’s mother hated her mother deeply. She was in disbelief that the reason was that her mother “was a couple shades darker” than Raymond’s family (57). Anne’s observation alludes to the hierarchy of color within the black community. Another example of the hierarchy is when Anne’s mother told her to get better grades than her classmate Darlene because “they already think they is better than ya’ll ‘cause they is yellow” (47). Fast forward to Anne entering Tougalaoo College where a lot of yellow students attend, Anne irritably thinks, “I wondered how many of the…students were yellow, and probably with rich-ass daddies” (261). Within the black community, skin tone is associated with an individual’s socioeconomic status and relationship with other blacks and because Anne was a few shades darker than Raymond’s family, her mother protected her from prejudice in the black community by pressuring Anne to do better in school and ignoring Anne’s questions about race.
In 1955, Anne Moody entered high school “with completely new insight into the life of Negroes in Mississippi” and Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old black boy from Chicago, was found floating dead in a river in Mississippi (125). Anne asked her mother who killed Emmett Till and she responded, “An Evil Spirit killed him. You gotta be a good girl or it will kill you too.” So since I was seven, I had lived in fear of that ‘Evil Spirit.’ It took me eight years to learn what that spirit was” (125) and “That boy’s a lot better off in heaven than he is here” (128). Her mother symbolizes whites as the “evil spirit” that murders blacks. Religion was part of the socialization process within black families. It was used as a coping mechanism to deal with oppression and teach children that God will protect them as a long as they stay away from the “Evil Spirit.” But later Anne realized, “the fear of being killed just because [she] was black… [she] also was told that if [she] were a good girl, [she] wouldn’t have to fear the Devil or hell. But [she] didn’t know what one had to do or not do as a Negro not to be killed. Probably just being a Negro period was enough” (133). Anne was slowly becoming conscious of the social constructs of race in the United States.
One evening, Anne went to her teacher’s, Mrs. Rice, home for dinner to discuss questions she had about the NAACP, the Emmett Till murder, and blacks in the South. Anne learned, “about Negroes being butchered and slaughtered by whites in the South… [if a] man was butchered or killed by man, in the case of Negroes by whites, they were left lying on a road or found floating in a river or something” like an animal (133). Mrs. Rice became a mother figure for Anne. She answered the questions Anne’s mother refused to answer. She contributed in Anne’s perception of race in the South.
When Anne was fifteen she started to hate black. In her book, she wrote that she, “hated them for not standing up and doing something about the murders…[she] began to look upon Negro men as cowards” (134). Blacks have been silenced by whites and themselves. Racism is extremely institutionalized in the South that Blacks have learned to conform to racism and racial stratification.
Towards the end of high school, Anne was introduced to the concept of institutionalized racism. Emma’s, Anne’s father’s new woman, brother-in-law accidently shot her during an incident of rage against his family. To Anne’s surprise, Emma forgave her brother-in-law and “placed the blame… upon the whites in Woodville and how they had set things up making it almost impossible for the Negro men to earn a living” (224). Emma explained that whites are either killing blacks or making it impossible for blacks to get a stable job to feed their family.
Throughout college, Anne was involved with the NAACP and CORE campaigns to register blacks in Mississippi. While canvassing in Canton, Anne meets Mrs. Chinn, a black café owner. From Mrs. Chinn, she learns that the,
“The federal government controls cotton by giving each state a certain allotment. Each state decides how much each county gets and each county distributes the allotments to the farmers … [where] ‘white people getting most of the allotments,’… it seemed that the federal government was directly or indirectly responsible for most of the segregation, discrimination, and poverty in the South” (313).
The United States Constitution did not protect the ‘inalienable’ rights of blacks in the South. The fourteenth amendment, which expanded citizenship and prevented any state to “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” was not applicable to blacks in the South. Moody wrote that if the government will not enforce the constitutional amendments, then the people must give the amendments meaning (315).
After working tirelessly for the Movement, Anne believed that mobilizing black communities, especially older blacks, to vote will not improve their lives. She said that the Movement, “should have been working with minds that were susceptible to change— ones that were open, inquisitive, and eager to learn” (362). By educating and improving the lives of the younger generation, the racial socialization of future generations will transform to encourage blacks to fight against the social constructs of race and institutionalized racism. Not until this happen, Anne thinks this world “should be black, blind, and deaf, and without any feelings at all. Then there won’t be any color to be seen, no hatred to be heard, and no pain to be felt” (388). Her statement exemplifies that race is something learned. From Anne Moody’s autobiography, we learn about the racial socialization of blacks in the South and how a young girl fights against Southern social norms by questioning individuals and communities’ values, beliefs, and behaviors regarding the treatment of blacks. Anne’s story reflects the frustrations of people involved in the Civil Rights Movement trying to change the culture of racism in the South.