Anne Moody Essay

Lina Vang
History 17C
Instructor Bergstrom
31 August 2009
The Segregation and Separation of Racial Inequalities
During the mid 20th century in the United States, social, political, and economic discrimination limited African - Americans from having equal rights in America.   As a struggle to fight the racial segregation between the blacks and the whites, the Civil Rights Movement occurred in the mid 1900’s and was established to guarantee equal opportunities and rights for people regardless of their sex, nationality, and religion.   Anne Moody, a civil rights activist illustrates how an individual black American woman found her strength and motivation within herself to overcome the racism that occurred in her autobiography, Coming Age of Mississippi.   In her autobiography, she explains the role of racism in America as she experiences the constant shame that she suffered personally as well as witnessing how other Black people accepted the racial humiliation as she grew up in a poor, Black rural community. Anne Moody’s decisions to act against racism resulted when she discovered that racism was a problem that occurred everywhere as she moved from one city to another during her childhood, high school, and college school years.   As Anne Moody matures, her experiences within her family and within society shape her to become a strong individual woman. Through becoming conscious of racial and gender inequalities, Anne’s maturity helps her become a civil rights activist through observing different features of society in terms of her childhood, gender and racial segregation, individuals’ weakness to the discrimination, and inequalities within the labor force between the blacks and whites.    
As Moody recalls her childhood, she accepted society as the way it was and did not question race or see the differences between skin colors until she started interacting with white people at home, specifically her neighbors.   It was argued that many...