Coming of Age in Mississippi

“Coming of Age”
Anne Moody, an innocent victim of discrimination, injustice, and violence, establishes her position in a racially torn society by becoming an activist in the Civil Rights Movement. Anne’s triumphs and tribulations take her from a sharecropper’s shack to Tugaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi, and, finally, to Washington, D.C. where she will testify about the racial discrimination and injustice in the South. Anne Moody is destined to become an activist in the Movement after witnessing and experiencing the horrific inequity of the times. By the time Anne was fifteen-years-old she hated everyone – “whites who were responsible for the countless murders” and Negroes for “not standing up and doing something about the murders.” (129) This hatred inspired Anne to take an active role; not doing so would have been the most cowardly act of all.
Anne’s awareness of social injustice is triggered when Emmett Till, a 14-year old African-American boy, ...