America of the 1960s was a social and ideological
battleground. It was fighting an idelogical war in southeast
Asia, while at home it was battling civil rights conflicts
which had been simmering just beneath the surface for over a
hundred years. In what could only be explained as historical
irony, the U.S. military was fighting for human rights for
the South Vietnamese while denying civil rights to its
citizens whose only "crime" was that their skin was black.
The civil rights movement not only defined America, but also
the lives of the black men and women who had long known
oppression, and were frutrated by the feeble attempts to
combat it. Anne Moody's autobiography, Coming of Age in
Mississippi, explored the impact of the civil rights
movement on her life and perspective. We can find three
events in Moody's as turning points in her life; her high-
school days, her college experiences, and finally, the
As Moody recalled her childhood, she acknowledged that
from a very early age, racism wasn't just something to read
about in newspapers. In Mississippi, it was like an
insidious cancer from which there was no escape. Even as a
child, although she lacked the intellectual comprehension of
prejudice, she knew that she was treated differently from
other children. She wondered why the white families had such
modern conveniences as indoor toilets, while her family and
those like them were denied such things. What was their
secret? Moody was an acaemic scholar who had received a
college scholarship, much to the delight of her parents, but
she always knew she would never be like everybody else. Her
family were proud, working-class people who attempted to
assimilate into the American mainstream, but racism made
Moody angry and eager to fight. This left her increasingly
...