Comming of age in Mississippi
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Coming of Age in Mississippi
In Anne Moody's published autobiography, Coming of Age in Mississippi, she depicts what it was like to grow up in the South as a poor African American. Instead of focusing the book on the years she spent in the civil rights movement, she chose to start from when she was a child at age four. Narrating her life throughout the book, Moody illustrates why the civil rights movement was such a necessity by exemplifying the physical, economic, and social racial injustices that took place in society from the beginning of her childhood to her action in the movement for civil rights.
Moody grew up with her mother, her father, her sister Adline, and her brother Junior on a plantation as sharecroppers of land owned by a white man named Mr. Carter. Moody's parents separated when her father left her mother for another woman, leaving Moody's mother alone to raise the kids. Her mother demonstrated a strong strength of character raising the kids on her own, a trait that influenced Moody and gave her the ability to strive throughout the novel.
Moody encountered issues with race many times as a child. For example, she made friends with a few white neighbors and paraded to the movies with them. At the movies, she found that she was not allowed to go to the regular seats with the white neighbors; instead, she was directed to the balcony to join all the other black people at the theatre...