In Coming of Age in Mississippi, Anne Moody tells the story of her childhood and young adulthood, chronicling how she became active in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The story starts in the 1940s, when Anne, who goes by Essie Mae, is four years old and living with her family on a plantation in Mississippi. Both of her parents, Daddy (Diddly) and Mama (Toosweet), work in the fields while Anne’s nine-year-old uncle, George Lee watches Anne and her sister, Adline, during the day. When George Lee accidentally sets the house on fire, the children are watched by their 12-year-old uncle Ed.
Eventually, Diddly leaves the family to live with Florence who is a “mulatto.” Mama gives birth to a baby, Junior. As a result of this split in their family, Mama and the children move many times over the next few years. As they move houses and Mama works various jobs, as a waitress and as a maid for white people, the family struggles with money and often does not have enough to eat.
Mama takes up with Raymond, a light-skinned soldier. Mama gives birth to a child, James. Because Mama is unable to support her three children already, Raymond and his mother, Miss Pearl, take him away. Mama and the children visit James at Miss Pearl’s house, although Anne notices that Mama always seems uncomfortable around Miss Pearl. As Anne becomes friends with white children in her neighborhood, she begins to wonder why their lives are so different than hers.
Despite Mama’s struggles affording food and clothes for the children, Anne excels in school. Outside of school, Anne works housekeeping and babysitting for white families. Some families, such as the Claibornes, treat Anne well and take an interest in her education. Mama falls pregnant with Raymond again and the family moves to a house with Raymond near the rest of his family. However, Raymond’s family treat Mama poorly. Mama gives birth to the baby, Jennie Ann. In order to endear herself and her children to Miss Pearl and the rest of Raymond’s family, Mama takes them to Centreville Baptist. However, much to Anne’s resistance, Mama insists on having Anne baptized at their old church, Mount Pleasant.
Anne begins working for Mrs. and Mrs. Jenkins, who treat her well. Through Mrs. Jenkins, whom she calls by her first name of Linda Jean, Anne meets Mrs. Burke and reluctantly begins working for her. Mrs. Burke is controlling and, more significantly, shows Anne the deep racism embedded in Southern whites.
In 1954, Emmett Till is murdered in Mississippi. His murder awakens Anne, who is about to start high school, to the brutal racism of the South and for the first time Anne fears being killed for being Black. After Till’s murder, Mrs. Burke begins to meet with her “guild,” a group of white women who discuss actions to take against the Black liberation movement, more frequently. As Anne learns more about racism in the United States, she becomes depressed. Wanting to get out of Centreville, Anne goes to Baton Rouge over the summer to live with Uncle Ed and his wife, Bertha. When she returns to Centreville, she makes herself busy with various activities, one of them being tutoring Mrs. Burke’s son Wayne and his friends in algebra.
During one summer, Anne stays with Grandma Winnie in New Orleans and works at a restaurant. There, she meets Lily White and Lola, two queer people who work at the restaurant and open her eyes to a different part of life. As Anne grows up, she receives more attention from men. One of these men is Raymond, and Anne becomes afraid of him. Eventually, their relationship becomes so tense that Anne runs away to live with Daddy and his new wife, Emma.
After high school graduation, Anne goes to the historically Black Natchez College on a basketball scholarship. She then transfers to Tougaloo College, also historically Black, in Jackson Mississippi. There, she gets involved with the civil rights movement through the campus NAACP chapter. Mama continually writes to Anne imploring her not to be involved with the movement for her own safety and that of her family. Her activist activities included the famous sit-in at Woolworth’s lunch counter to protest segregation in public space.
Anne moves to Canton, Mississippi, a rural town in Madison County, to work with the CORE movement. She and her fellow activists deal with violent threats. Anne eventually takes a step back from the work for her own mental health, spending some time in New Orleans with her sister, Adline. Anne criticizes the movement, wishing it would spend more time on economic issues rather than the seemingly unsuccessful voter registration drives. At the end of the memoir, Anne boards a bus to Washington D.C. with fellow young activists. As they sing “We Shall Overcome,” she wonders if Black people in the United States will ever overcome racism.
