Paper Assignment: Option 2
In Coming of Age in Mississippi, Anne Moody discusses her involvement and events that took place during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. Growing up poor and black in the rural South, Anne suffered through many negative experiences that slowly paved the way for her to join the movement. During her teenage years, a small fire started to light up inside her as she continually suffered and gradually began to comprehend the ideas of racism, rights, and civil liberties. In order to better understand her involvement in the movement, three key areas will be addressed: the events that led her to be involved, how her perspective about the movement changed over time, and how this change is related to the change in the Civil Rights Movement.
First of all, without the negative or inspiring events that Anne experienced growing up, she most likely would have never even been interested in joining the movement. One event that indirectly influenced her was the death of Emmett Till. Anne writes, “Before Emmett Till’s murder, I had known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was a new fear known to me- the fear of being killed just because I was black.” (Moody, 132) The quote explains how Anne Moody had finally been introduced to a new kind of evil that she was not really quite sure had existed, the evil of racism. This indirectly adds to Anne’s motivation to join the movement because it opens her eyes to an even greater truth, that not all people are equal as she once thought. She now understood why every white person’s home that she worked for was so nice, luxurious, and expensive. The example helps to understand her involvement in the movement by serving as a piece of the puzzle in which her passion for civil liberties derived from. In other words, this is where her seed of her desire for true freedom began to grow.
Another indirect reason that influenced Anne to eventually become involved in the movement was one of her...