What Is Anne Moody's Determination Of Gender Inequality

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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…show more content…
As she suffers from finding a stable income and house for her family, Moody’s mother Toosweet encourages Moody to do well in school. However, her push to ensure Moody to succeed in school is only to prove to her husband Raymond’s family that her daughter is as smart as his family, not encourage Moody to attend college and fight for her rights. As a child, Moody was unaware of the oppression and inequality that African Americans had suffered. As she constantly questioned her concerns to her mother about the incidents that occurred, her mother always told her, “Just do your work like you don’t know anything” (Moody, 123). She realizes that her mother ignores the racial acts against her community and becomes alienated within her family as well as her community when she fights for her rights. During college, Moody became actively involved in the civil rights movement where she gained no support from her family or community. She knew that because she was involved in the Civil Rights Movement, she was unable to go back to her hometown because of the hatred towards her. She knew that by being a part of a fight for…show more content…
Because at a young age she didn’t know the differences between being white and black, Moody only thought of color differences when the white people paid her for the hard labor that she did. In addition, Moody worked many jobs for white and observed many little things about white people but still found it hard to distinguish the differences between being white and black. Throughout her years of working at homes and factories, she concluded that white people were always on top within the work industry where the black people were always on the bottom. Because the majority of black women were working for white women, she concluded that white women were lazy. One job that she learned about racial differences was being a housekeeper, where she worked for a lady named Mrs. Burke. Mrs. Burke bluntly tells her that because she is black, she doesn’t get paid that much. Through holding local guild meetings at her house with her gal friends, Moody discovers how white people expressed their hatred toward black people. The triple exploitation of nationality, work, and gender characterizes Moody’s motivation to her individuality of becoming a civil rights activist. Similar to Coming of Age in Mississppi, Mirta Vidal’s article on Chicanas

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