Rough Draft of Paper #4

Life for blacks in the South was a conflict between satisfying the demands of whites and fulfilling their hopes for better lives. Ann Moody shares her account of life for southern blacks in Coming of Age In Mississippi. Moody’s novel is a staggering representation of how the Civil Rights movement impacted black life in the South through the eyes of a young woman. Civil Rights activists were constantly beaten and defeated by violent whites, in order to win the war on segregation. Violence, whether verbal or physical, is a unifying theme throughout the novel. Moody uses dialogue to convey the impending danger facing Civil Rights activists when they challenged white authority. Moody shows how the violence done against other activists and herself shaped her view of whites and life in the South. Moody uses imagery, story, and characters to make her claims about the Civil Rights Movement. Moody and those like her were soldiers in a violent internal war against American bigotry.

Moody uses dialogue to convey the theme of violence. When Moody and another girl named Rose try to do a sit in by themselves they are confronted with harsh epithets. Moody says “the crowd was going to get violent any minute now…some were threatening to kick us out-or throw us all the way to Tougaloo” (Moody, 281-282). At first glance it appears that the crowd is winning because they forced the girls out of the diner. However, the attention that these conflicts brought only made the Civil Rights Movement stronger. For instance, when a black minister saw the girls being pushed out of the diner he rescued them. The minister instructed the girls “not to ever try and sit-in again without first planning it with an organization…you girls just can’t go around doing things on your own” (Moody, 282). This quote shows that sit-ins were a militant operation that required training and the backing of organizations. Sit-ins required discipline and strength, which Moody did not possess alone. Doing sit-in was a way to make people choose sides. Spectators had to choose to rise up and become soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement.

Moody also uses dramatic story telling in order to demonstrate the violence black activists encountered. Moody recounts her experience in a planned sit-in with the NAACP. She says “a man rushed forward threw Memphis from his seat, and slapped my face...I saw Memphis lying near the lunch counter with blood running out of the corners of his mouth...the man who’d thrown him down kept kicking him against the head” (Moody 290-291). This vivid imagery makes the violence that activists faced tangible. Violence from whites shows that the Civil Rights movement was controversial in for time.