I recently re-read this book, remembering it as one of the most important books in my life and the book that ultimately led to my decision to major in history in undergrad. and focus on Southern history. While it is hard to criticize this book because Moody's life trials are so profound, I found myself growing annoyed with this Moody on this second read; she is consistently self-absorbed and narcissistic throughout. To the point where her stories of activist work in the Civil Rights struggle took a backseat descriptions of how great she looked in her new dress, how all the boys thought she was the prettiest, and how she was the prettiest. I tried to be forgiving, but there are so many others of her generation who have managed to tell their stories without obsessing over these sorts of details. Moody makes herself likable and real, and it is a very quick read. While this will remain a standard requirement on all History 7B reading lists in universities, and I believe it should stay there, it is important this isn't the only memoir used to illustrate the struggle of the times...

Anne Moody's autobiography is a very matter-of-factly told tale of, as the title indicates, growing up in Mississippi. Particularly, Moody reveals the difficulties inherent in growing up poor and black in Mississippi in the mid-twentieth century.

The first half of the book is devoted to her childhood and high school years and is at times somewehat uninteresting (I don't really care about her winning Homecoming Queen, for instance), but it does show really clearly the depths of poverty that many African American families descended to in the absence of real freedom and real jobs. Despite my hesitations about the first half of the book, those personal elements that I find less than interesting are not unimportant to the development of the latter part of the book. Because of the audience's knowledge of Anne Moody's inner life and personal trials and triumphs, readers are better able to identify with her and to see her struggles as real, rather than exaggerated or specific to her alone.

The second half of the book is much more interesting. When she goes away to college, she gets involved with the NAACP, CORE, and the SNCC and begins her political work. During and after college, she takes part in sit-ins, helps to organize voter registration drives, and spends a year working in Mississippi despite poverty, hunger, and continual death threats. The chapters that tell this part of her story serve as a valuable document of the practical elements of the Civil Rights movement. It's easy to hear of Martin Luther King, Jr., and to read Malcolm X's autobiography and to get caught up in the grand ideas of the Civil Rights movement, meanwhile forgetting about the grassroots organization required to support those big ideas and overlooking all the other people involved in the movement. The courage of those willing to risk their lives and their sanity in order to help create a better world is undeniable, and Anne Moody proves herself to be one of those courageous people who give hope to the rest of us.

However, the book does not end on an optimistic note. Published in 1968, Moody's autobiography only reaches 1964. This is significant because at the end of the book Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., are still alive, but by the time the book was published, Malcolm X had been assassinated and Martin Luther King, Jr., had been recently assassinated or would be soon (depending on when in 1968 the book was published). This reflects a significant change in the political climate and in the tone of the Civil Rights movement between the events described and the publication of the book. Moody uses this shift to help make her political argument. She has said that she saw herself as an activist, not a writer, when she wrote this book, and the conclusion of the autobiography proves this. The Anne Moody of 1964 speaks to the audience of 1968 to question the efficacy of nonviolent methods and the value of appealing to the federal government for help (when their policies and practices have caused many of the problems and continued to cause social and economic inequities even when the laws regarding segregation were changed) and to call attention to the necessity for all people to keep working toward a solution (not just public figures or middle-class blacks). The final lines are filled with doubt and, in their doubt and disillusionment, force the reader to evaluate his or her own confidence or doubt. Is Moody right to doubt the movement? Is she right to wonder whether going to Washington to protest will create change? And if she is right, then what should be done? Her book is a blunt reminder of the people who live in poverty and suffer the most from racism (whether that racism comes from individuals or the government) and a call to action that insists that talk is not enough.

Sometimes those books that you don't get to finish before class and have to spark note the morning before the quiz are really worth coming back to after the end of the semester. Very worthwhile indeed.

This is a great book to see back to 40's to 60's in Mississippi, America. Through ages Anne Moody doesn't only change her name, but she changes as she grows older to become the quality and a kind of of person she became, as she observed, understood and fought against injustice, racism, inequality... every disorder that came to hers attention through life.
“But courage was growing in me too. Little by little it was getting harder and harder for me not to speak out.”

I found it shocking that not only the whites resist to change but also the blacks. It wasn't easy to transform the way black southerns see themselves, not as a second class citizens. Racism to the level of physical violence that the idea of white people can do anything to black people and get away with it is presented well in Coming of Age in Mississippi.
“Before Emmett Till’s murder, I had known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was a new fear known to me—the fear of being killed just because I was black. This was the worst of my fears. I knew once I got food, the fear of starving to death would leave. I also was told that if I were a good girl, I wouldn’t have to fear the Devil or hell. But I didn’t know what one had to do or not do as a Negro not to be killed. Probably just being a Negro period was enough, I thought.”

Black people was dependent on white employers for their income, food and housing, which makes it even difficult, if black people joins civil right organizations or even register to vote, they risk losing their job.
“I was sick of pretending, sick of selling my feelings for a dollar a day.”

The author’s purpose for this book is to show people who grew up in places without segregation what it’s like to grow up in the south as a young, black woman in 1968. This is a memoir written about Essie Mae and her tough life growing up in Mississippi in poverty with many dark, and violent sides to the story. In that way, it’s probably intended for adult audiences. It’s difficult to read and to believe someone lived like that and went through that is challenging. One theme I found in this book to be true and in which I still see today everywhere, is that people are more privileged than they think. A powerful quote is “I was sick of pretending, sick of selling my feelings for a dollar a day.”

I've always considered the Civil Rights Movement as a totally righteous and necessary movement, but reading the details didn't make me feel good about anyone; not whites, not blacks, not politicians, not police and not media. It was hard for me to finish reading this book, I wanted vomit up the contents and leave it behind, just contemplate beauty instead. But I guess I should say something. Here goes:
I didn't understand sometimes, maybe too white to understand. She blames everything on whites basically but she works alongside white civil rights workers and the only man she married was white (looked that up on Wikipedia, it was not part of the book). Her father left the family without an income when Anne (Essie Mae) was a young child to pursue another woman; her mother's boyfriend evidently had a sexual interest in her when she was a teenager and hated her because of it so she left home; her father's girlfriend's brother in law gets upset about something and is threatening to shoot his wife but ends up shooting her father's girlfriend instead. Her father's girlfriend loses the majority of one foot but doesn't blame the man who did it, she blames the whites who made it difficult for black men to make a living. Anne thinks this is admirable but I am confused. It seems to me that if a man picks up a gun and shoots someone then he is responsible for what he did. If a white man is unemployed and cracks under the strain and tries to shoot his wife and injures someone then he is prosecuted and jailed. Why is it different for a black man? Unemployment and poverty can happen to anyone. It doesn't provide immunity from prosecution for crimes. And for Anne herself, her family caused a lot of the difficulties of her childhood, as is true for a lot of people of any color. The whites underpaid her and she experienced prejudice as that was the way the whole southern society was structured. But overall her anguish came from the experiences of seeing black people in her town being beat up, run out of town or killed by white men. I do understand that part. I think Anne may have been somewhat emotionally unbalanced by it. Many members of her family rejected her during and after her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement; whether out of fear or disagreement or non-understanding is never really clear. I hope that that was resolved.
I think the Civil Rights Movement needed to happen as the segregation was an ugly thing. What I also don't understand though is what has happened since then. We may not be segregated but we continue to be polarized and blame is being slung in all directions. We've had innocent white men grabbed by black mobs and beat nearly to death. Two that come to mind are the Reginald Denny beating after the acquittal of the policemen who beat Rodney King and the recent beating in Cincinnati of a white guy by about 40 blacks last 4th of July. The acquittal of the police in the Rodney King beating caused widespread looting and burning in Los Angeles. Fifty-three people died. I can't understand how this helped anybody. Did Reginald Denny's permanent brain damage help anyone? Now we have the whole "black lives matter" countered with "police lives matter" slogan match going on. Why? All lives matter.
Like I said, sometimes I feel like nothing got solved and nothing ever will and I just should ignore it all and contemplate beauty and try to create beauty in my own little space and that is it.
I AM grateful to Anne and others like her that we are no longer segregated, and have compassion for the those who suffered prejudice and ill treatment.

I can't give the proper words to how powerful this book is. It's an unflinching, plain spoken, searing, unvarnished account of an American life that speaks to the lie of America as the "land of the free." There is no sweet moral arc of triumph despite the overwhelming resilience and courage of this Civil Rights Movement activist. There's just a cold - but so deeply humane - account of American caste. This is such an intimate account of Black life in Mississippi in the mid-20th century where every aspect of every day is impacted in small and large ways by white supremacy. And it's just a memoir, a telling - there is no grandstanding rhetoric or high-minded grandiose language. It's just a straight account of the moral rot of racism.

But it's more than that - it's a testament to profound courage. This is a portrait of the Civil Rights era where Martin Luther King Jr is hardly mentioned. In fact, it's a book that demands we recognize how much we've over-focused on the men of that era. It also shows us how criminal it is that we don't recognize a woman like Anne Moody and what she endured for basic freedom the way we do, for example, the soldiers who fought the Nazis in World War II. It's every bit a moral equivalency.

I urge you to read it.

I selected this book because it received a high rating from a "Goodreads Friend". It was written almost 50 years ago and it seems we should have moved further along in the Civil Rights arena. Yes, there has been some progress, Blacks can vote, eat, drink and use the bathrooms side by side with Whiles, but the three biggest issues have not been eliminated - HATE, FEAR and IGNORANCE!! I was not aware of Anne Moody's involvement in the infamous Woolworth sit-in (even though I was her again at the time!) A very well written, factual and personal look into southern bigotry. To this day I wouldn't want to be an African-American on the streets of Mississippi after dark!!

Wow! I loved it. This is the best book I've read in 2017. I had no idea that an autobiography could be this good. I laughed so much at Essie Mae. She was so smart and brave at such a young age. Her first job was at age nine. I couldn't stand her mother. I thought she was useless. All she did was yell and talk down to her. And she made me mad having all those children with no money.

I think I connected with Essie Mae. Her perspective and the way she responded to people, even when she was very little, might as well have been me. And what a life she had. The work she did for the Movement was inspiring, especially in the light of current events and our constant reminders of the importance of staying woke and speak truth to power. I was mad at her for her fight in the Movement and I was cheering her on. I was mad at her because I was afraid for her and her family and her community.

Again, I loved this book. Lisa Renee Pitts(narrator) was awesome. I want to hear her voice more.
She was Essie Mae to me.

Read this back in college and remember it as a powerful autobiography. The author's unique insights into the 1960s civil rights era were striking in her poignancy, honesty, and bluntness. (Many of my college friends were truly shocked by this part of US history. This book helps the reader appreciate just what freedom means when you have to fight for it.)

EVERYONE needs to read this book. It's a true story of a young civil-rights activist. After she wrote the book, which you will not be able to put down once you start, she went into seclusion because many people bashed her for writing her story. It's heart-wrenching and hopeful. Anne Moody's courage is obvious and she never asks for your sympathy. You will learn so much from this book.

10/10 recommend

the last two hundred pages felt like fifty