Anne Moody “Coming of Age in Mississippi” (The Movement portion of the story)

Please pick whichever of the two options you prefer, and here they are again:

1) To what extent do the qualities of this text make it more or less useful to us? Are these truths more or less important? Do they matter more in 2017 than they might have in 1968, or 1987, or some other intermediate point?

or

2) In what ways do the truths of this text contradict the image of the Civil Rights Movement we been taught in school, in films, and in popular discussion? What counter-narratives does Anne present? Why do they matter?

Actual Assignment Instructions below….Essay question choices are above

Homework #2 ;The Movement; in Anne Moody;s Coming of Age in Mississippi

Background:

Our next three readings will present a special challenge in that each is a chapter of a larger book. As a result there will be characters, circumstances, and ideas presented that the author assumes you have already read. Before each reading I’ll try to prep you for these gaps well enough that you’ll still be able to get the main points of each text.

This week you are entering the life of Anne Moody just as she is stepping away from her college years and becoming a full-time civil rights activist. Anne was born in Rural Mississippi in 1940 and her life began typically enough – poverty, farming, institutional racism, and the essential roles of family, community, and church. However, as Anne got older it became obvious that she was not a typical person in the Jim Crow South. She resisted all forms of authority, the expectations her family and school tried to put on her, and race-based assumptions of life, work, and people. As a high school student she had direct interactions with the racist sheriff in her small town and earned a reputation as an unpredictable troublemaker. Everyone was glad when she left for college, especially her mother, who feared Anne would get herself shot or lynched if she stayed home any longer.

At college Anne tried to focus on her studies, and did earn her degree, but with each passing semester she became less of a student and more of an activist, eventually becoming a dynamic leader and organizer of young people in Mississippi. She famously participated in a sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter and eventually achieved such efficacy and notoriety that the Klan published a “hit list” with her name on it. It is this time in her life that you’ll read about.

As you do so, please remember a few things:
• This text was written in 1968, when she was only 28 years old, and when the Civil Rights Movement was far from settled. It is, in that way, a youthful document – the movement was young, the main character was young, the author was young.
Similarly, Martin Luther King was not yet assassinated, and certainly not canonized by the American press, politicians, and culture.
The movement was poorly-organized, under-funded, and over-extended. You are reading a very frustrated, exhausted, and ill-supported young woman. Just as it actually happened!

As historians, we face three contradictory realities about this text:
• On one hand, it is true. Anne was there and is reporting only things she saw with her own eyes, heard with her own ears, and did with her own hands. She makes not one claim beyond what she knew to be true. It is, in that way, powerfully intimate, proximate, almost claustrophobic.
• At the same time, however, it lacks context. Were there riots in New York City? What was being reported on the TV news at night? What was being debated in the state capital? How did Vietnam interact with the movement? We don’t know (not from Anne anyway), and she makes it clear that none of that mattered in her parts of rural Mississippi.
• Further, it is inherently youthful. Meaning that it is unvarnished by experience and the right; way of doing and reporting, but it is also so very raw, as any account from youthful eyes must be. It lacks a filter, perspective, and patience.

Answer in a 2-3 page essay: