Change and Anne Moody’s Racial Awareness

Moody (front right, facing the camera) and her companions endure the abuse at the Woolworth's sit-in protest, Jackson, MS.

Anne’s Moody’s memoir Coming of Age in Mississippi is a powerful insight into the life of a young girl growing up in the Deep South during the Civil-Rights Movement. Moody’s book chronicles her coming of age as a woman, and perhaps more importantly, it chronicles her coming of age as a politically active black woman. Her childhood and early years in school set up a foundation for her racial awareness and her need to be extraordinary. She built upon that foundation as she went to college and sowed the seeds of political activism. During her later years in college, Moody became active in a number of organizations dedicated to making changes to the civil rights of her people. These events eventually led to her disillusionment with the effectiveness of the movement despite her continued action.

            One of Moody’s first references to racial awareness occurred when she was four years old. As a child, Moody’s family lived in a cabin on a plantation. Both of her parents worked as field hands and were forced to leave Anne and her little brother at home. One day Anne’s uncle, who was but a few years older than her, was bitterly taking care of her. He attempted to scare her with fire and he accidently lit the house on fire. The house all but burned to the ground. This event had a devastating effect on the family. Anne’s father Diddly left for a young fair-skinned mulatto woman named Florence. Anne noted her mother’s hatred for the other woman in terms of race. She remembered the woman distastefully described as “yellow,” followed by strings of colorful expletives (3-19).

            This event points out how early Moody’s unique perspective on race began to form. It is apparent that Moody’s mother had strong feelings toward others who were not of the same race as herself. Florence was of mixed race, and Anne’s mother saw her light complexion as a sign, and perhaps a reason, for her negative qualities. Anne remembers her mother’s use of racial labels despite her very young age. Though at the time she was much too young to understand the real implications of these thoughts and words, she remembered them. She was exceptional. Something inside her told her this event was significant, and only later would she fill in the gaps about why.

            Anne’s racial awareness t\was largely influenced by the events of the summer of 1955. A young African American man named Emmett Till came to Mississippi from Chicago to visit family. He stopped at a store to purchase some things, and on the way out he allegedly winked and whistled at a white woman. As a result, a mob pulled him from his home and brutally beat and lynched him. News of the events spread across the country. This lynching had a massive influence on Moody. Until this event, Moody had never really seen the dramatic disparity between whites and blacks. She now feared for her life, and she understood that it was simply because she was black-skinned (127-37).

            Emmett Till’s murder marked the beginning of Anne’s path toward activism. Anne’s new understanding of the plight of black Americans, stemming largely from this single incident, would act as a foundation for the rest of her ideology to build upon. Were it not for a major event like this, Anne may not have developed some of her powerful ideological changes as she grew older. Her more radical decisions, made later in life, would not have been made without her strong ideology. Her entire life would have been different, and many of the Civil-Rights-related events she was involved in would have been different. Thus, Moody’s reaction to this single event may have had a massive effect on many people.

            In some ways Anne’s coming of age as a teenage girl led to her coming of age racially. As she entered high school, Anne began growing physically as fast as she did mentally. She outgrew her skirts and was forced to wear jeans to school, which was somewhat gauche according to the standards of the time. She continued to grow and her jeans became rather tight, after which the boys began to pay her much attention. As a result of her maturing physique, Anne’s popularity grew so much that she was chosen as Homecoming Queen. Anne’s father got enough money together to purchase her a beautiful gown to wear. Moody described this night as the best of her life (200-21).

            This event that signified Moody’s move from girlhood to womanhood set the precedent for her need to be racially exceptional. Moody loved to feel special and different. Anne had a new found confidence after this event. She honestly believed that she could do anything. Moody never showed much fear, even as a little girl, but the reservations she did have as a girl largely disappeared after her homecoming. She became more resolute and determined to do what she desired, and that resolution would reveal itself during college and beyond.

            During high school Anne was heavily involved in the girls’ basketball team. She worked very hard and became a star player. Her efforts on the court paralleled her efforts in school. She maintained very high grades, and as a result of all her hard work she received a scholarship to play basketball at Natchez College. Anne became even more firm in her beliefs than before. When the students were eating their grits for breakfast they found maggots in them. Moody attempted to go back into the kitchen to talk to them about it when Miss Harris stopped her and told her to sit back down. She refused, and told her it was her business because she too had “to eat this shit!” Thus began the students’ heated boycott, largely led my Moody (253-58).

            The boycott at Natchez was one of Moody’s first signs of political activism. Up to this point in her memoir, Anne had been willing to stand up for her beliefs, but not in a political way. In this instance Anne acted on the racial awareness by understanding the need for equality and fairness to all, even to lowly students. She was willing to stand up, rather powerfully, and defend her rights. This small-scale political activism gave Moody a taste for the movement, and may have been a major effect in her choice to join the movement a short time later.

            While at school Anne decided that she would be content to live the life of an activist. She wanted to try and make a difference in people’s lives, and she felt that her race needed help more than anyone. After transferring to Tougaloo College, she became involved with the SNCC, or Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The SNCC was concerned with forming protests to desegregate public and private establishments. With this group, Moody attended a sit-in at the Woolworths Department store in Jackson, Mississippi. The Woolworths sit-in was one of the most violently attacked sit-ins of the 1960s, and it received a lot of media attention around the country. Anne and a group of other students simply went to the lunch counter of the white establishment and sat down. Soon dozens of people flooded into the store. Anne decided they should pray, and as they bowed their heads a group of people rushed them. A number of men involved were badly beaten, and the girls were beaten and harassed as well. Onlookers dumped condiments and drinks all over them. After a few hours of torment the store owner closed up shop and everyone was forced to leave. As Anne left the store, she saw that ninety police officers were standing at the window watching the entire thing (286-90).

            Anne’s experience at Woolworths made her hatred for segregation even stronger, and because of her personality and experience, it gave her more motivation to fight against it. Moody said she was absolutely sickened by the people of Mississippi. They believed so strongly in segregation that they would humiliate and physically beat people simply for asking to be served at a lunch counter. They would literally kill to preserve their so-called balance. At this moment, however, Anne’s perspective changed. The white people were sick, she decided. They had a disease, and she felt that she could not hate a sickness. This experience was the beginning of her disillusionment with the effectiveness of the movement. What chance did they have against a sickness? How could they fight a sickness that was in its terminal stage? Moody offers no answer (290-91).

            Moody became fully involved in the Civil-Rights Movement. She was present at the March on Washington when Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. As she sat and listened to Dr. King speak, she realized that the movement had no leaders, for their leaders were only dreamers. Back home in Mississippi they had no time to sleep, let alone dream (333-36).

            In this passage Moody began to doubt the effectiveness of the current movement. This was a passive movement, similar to that of India when Mahatma Gandhi led his people to an effective passive revolution. Unfortunately, a passive movement would not work in America’s Deep South. The movement, in Moody’s mind, was not focused on the things that would make the biggest difference. They were focused too much on voter registration and mock-elections. Moody thought the movement would be much more effective if they did things to help bring about progress now. They should do things like help black farmers buy their own land. That, to Moody, would be a real, tangible change that would have a lasting effect. Despite all this, she knew that she could never leave the movement, because there was just too much work to do (333-37, 373-77).

            Anne Moody was remarkably racially aware. From a young age, Moody felt something different about race relations than those around her. She developed into an intelligent, strong-willed young woman with a desire to make changes to the racial landscape in the South. For years she worked tirelessly to help bring about those changes, but eventually she became disillusioned. She knew who she was, and she knew that she needed to help make a difference, but she did not know if she could. She closed her book with a bus ride to Washington, where the group would try to sway Congress toward desegregation. The group began to sing We Shall Overcome. Moody thought to herself this question: “I WONDER. I really WONDER.” (424)

Prose Styles and Du Bois’ Argument for a Better World

In his book The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois employed a revolutionary style of writing. He did not follow the usual conventions of turn-of-the-century scholarly argument, but innovatively merged forms together, using this new form as a literary representation of his over arching argument. Du Bois used different prose styles that characterized the different facets of his argument. According to Du Bois African Americans needed a rounded, multifaceted experience through first, formal higher education—represented by abstract prose; second, vocational training and basic education—represented by factual history; and third the liberty to experience life—represented by personal accounts. All of these pieces of Du Bois argument pointed toward facilitating a change in black leadership and black communities.

            Du Bois began by demonstrating his remarkable ability for abstraction. These famous words set up the purpose and tone of his book: “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.”[1] Blacks in America were born into this life with a symbolic veil over their eyes. They were forced to see themselves and the world not only through their own point of view, but through the point of view of white men. At no other time in history, Du Bois claimed, was an entire race forced into this “double-consciousness,” “this twoness.” Two men inhabited the body of every black man, and they struggled since Emancipation to synthesize these two into one, more perfect man, a “coworker in the kingdom of culture.”[2]

            Black communities’ struggled to gain the equality they were promised following Emancipation. During the years of Reconstruction, former slaves found themselves in an extension of the bondage they had just come from. They pleaded for liberty, and as Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteeing them the right to vote, they thought they had found the means by which they may finally find it. For years they tried to no avail. Alas they settled on the idea that “book-learning” in higher institutions of learning would free them from their perpetual bonds of serfdom. Book learning by itself, however, did not accomplish this goal.[3] Du Bois then stated his claim that none of the above paths to liberty could accomplish its goal alone or in succession with another. Black Americans needed political action, vocational training, and higher institutional learning together to bring the entire race up onto an equal plane with the rest of society.[4]

            This portion of Du Bois’ book portrayed a number of abstract ideas. He formed these ideas after much contemplation on the subject, apparent in the form of his argument. He was able to think outside the box and form an original argument grounded in evidence, both real and ideological. Du Bois used abstract ideas again and again throughout Souls, not only to argue his point in text, but in form. His ability to create arguments based on conceptual ideas resulted from his education. After finishing a bachelor’s degree from Fisk, Du Bois studied at Harvard, where he earned another bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and became the first African American man to earn a Ph.D. from the acclaimed institution.[5] He himself, Du Bois argued subliminally, exemplified why black Americans needed higher education. Similar theoretical portions pervade the entirety of the text.

            Du Bois followed his abstract ideas with segments of factual history. His second essay titled “Of the Dawn of Freedom” exemplified his broad knowledge on the subject. In this essay Du Bois recounted the history of society’s question “What shall be done with the Negroes?” and how they attempted to answer it.[6] The Freedmen’s Bureau, according to Du Bois’ history, attempted to wrestle with this issue during and following the Civil War. From “contraband of war,” to “a military resource,” African Americans during the war were still seen as property or livestock. Following the war Congress struggled to designate what agency would deal with the problem of freed slaves, and how that agency would be allowed to do so. They hastily put them under the War Department in the new Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. Slowly the Freedmen’s Bureau melted away. Both the public and private attempts to handle the issues of freed slaves failed. These failures placed freedmen, and all free blacks, in a state of permanent lower class status.[7]

            This second essay attempted to present facts and history of the Freedmen’s Bureau as they existed, along with the long-term effects of those events. Du Bois related these facts to show the need for basic education. Basic schooling teaches individuals how to make sense of history and patterns while fostering reading and writing skills that will help him/her function as a productive member of society. It is very difficult to vote or enter into meaningful dialogue without a basic understanding of the English language and basic histories. Du Bois argued that the African American people want to be more than just workers, and their inability to perform basic tasks within society would guarantee permanent worker status. This example of the many fact-based essays in Souls exemplifies Du Bois argument for basic education.

            To make his abstract and fact-oriented arguments more real and human, Du Bois followed them with his own personal experiences and observations of black life in America. His two essays, “Of the Meaning of Progress” and “Of the Black Belt” are powerful examples of Du Bois’ ability to relate his own experiences to others. The first of the two told the story of Du Bois’ years as a school teacher in Tennessee. He soon felt the effects of “the veil” as his inequality within the society became apparent.[8] His students had to meet in an old drafty corn shed. Often the students could not attend school due to their work responsibilities. Families were forced by their economic conditions to live in single room cabins. The people worked so hard, in so many forms of labor, and were never able to break even. When he returned a few years later his former students were either in the same condition as their parents, or dead.[9] Similarly, the families he saw when he visited Georgia in the second essay were dreadfully trapped in their situation. Debt constantly loomed over the heads of the tenant farmers no matter their efforts, and the once great economy was shriveling.[10] Both of these communities were stalled in their progression and riddled with despair.

            Du Bois’ personal memoirs effectively expressed his belief in the importance of liberty to experience life for oneself. Much of Du Bois’ understanding and conviction of the issues he argued came from his observations of the system. His basic education, in connection with his higher education, opened his eyes to the issues when he saw them. He had the freedom to gain his education and the freedom to personally see the effect society’s bigotry had on black Americans. This is where, had he chosen, Du Bois could have made his call for political action.

When an educated black populace could personally see or experience the degradation caused by the “veil,” they could combine for political action to begin to change the system. Only together could education and experience bring American blacks up as equal members of society, and Du Bois used his three prose styles to exemplify that. True employment of these three pieces together would have a lasting effect on the black community. Souls not only made an argument for the improvement of the black situation, it literally was that argument.

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[1] W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1902 (Simon and Schuster: NY, 2009) 3.

[2] Ibid, 7-8.

[3] Ibid, 10-11.

[4] Ibid, 13-16.

[5] Ibid, IX.

[6] Ibid, 18.

[7] Ibid, 19-40.

[8] Ibid, 65.

[9] Ibid, 62-75.

[10] Ibid, 109-131.