In Coming of Age in Mississippi, Anne Moody’s loss of innocence corresponds with her understanding of racism in society. Her political awakening and increased understanding of the behavior of the adults in her life illuminates the ways that oppressed peoples cope with their conditions. As a child, Anne does not understand why white families have nicer houses and eat better food than her family. As she grows up, however, she becomes aware of the violence that her Black community—and the Black community in general—faces. Learning about the 1954 murder of Emmett Till, which happens a week before Anne begins high school, marks a key moment in Anne’s loss of innocence. Whereas before Till’s death Anne had been believed that an “Evil Spirit” was the reason Black people often turned up dead (this is what Mama had told her, at least), Till’s murder shows her “what that spirit was:” racism. Mama’s lie is just one of the many times the adults in Anne’s life lie in order to shield her from the reality of racial violence within her community and the country as a whole.
But even after Anne learns the truth about the racial violence that Black people face in the U.S., Mama continues to urge her to hide her true feelings and ignore the obvious racism as best as she can. Worried about what will happen to Anne if she speaks openly in public or to her white employer about her feelings, Mama tells Anne to keep her head down. Later, when Anne learns about the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People NAACP and asks Mama about it, Mama gets upset and refuses to talk about it. Anne reflects on how her mother’s refusal to be honest has kept her in the dark about important social issues. Anne and Mama’s tension over acknowledging and discussing racism highlight the ways that oppression silences oppressed people, who fear they will face repercussions for speaking out. For the first time, Anne fears being killed based on the color of her skin. As Anne loses her youthful, innocent perception of the world and begins to understand why her life is different from her white counterparts, she also gains insight into how system racism discourages many oppressed Black adults from acknowledging or attempting to challenge the system that oppresses them.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Loss of Innocence ThemeTracker
Loss of Innocence Quotes in Coming of Age in Mississippi
I’m still haunted by dreams of the time we lived on Mr. Carter’s plantation. Lots of Negroes lived on his place. Like Mama and Daddy they were all farmers. We all lived in rotten two-room shacks. But ours stood out from the others because it was up on the hill with Mr. Carter’s big white house, overlooking the farms and the other shacks below.
Every time I tried to talk to Mama about white people she got mad. Now I was more confused than before. If it wasn’t the straight hair and the white skin that made you white, then what was it?
I wanted to enjoy and preserve that calm, peaceful look on [Mama’s] face, I wanted to think she would always be that happy, so I would never be unhappy again either…. All those dreams about eternal happiness I wanted for Mama, I knew deep down in my heart that it wouldn’t last.
I looked over at Miss Pearl them again and saw tears in the corner of Miss Pearl’s eyes. “She should cry,” I thought. “She shouldn’t even be in church and she doesn’t even speak to Mama and she lives right next door to her.”
She treated me just like I was one of her friends and I never thought of our color difference when I was with her, except when she paid me.
As they sang… I had chills all over my body and I was overcome by a sudden fear. The faces of the whites had written on them some strange yearning. The Negroes looked sad…. I got a feeling that there existed some kind of sympathetic relationship between the older Negroes and whites that the younger people didn’t quite get or understand.
A Negro man had a hard road to travel when looking for employment. A Negro woman, however, could always go out and earn a dollar a day because whites always needed a cook, a baby-sitter, or someone to do housecleaning.
“Just do your work like you don’t know nothing,” she said. “That boy’s a lot better off in heaven than he is here.”
When [Mrs. Burke] talked about Emmett Till there was something in her voice that sent chills and fear all over me. 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.
I was fifteen years old when I began to hate people. I hated the white men who murdered Emmett Till and I hated all the other whites who were responsible for the countless murders Mrs. Rice had told me about and those I vaguely remembered from childhood. But I also hated Negroes. I hated them for not standing up and doing something about the murders. In fact, I think I had a stronger resentment towards Negroes for letting whites kill them than towards the whites.
I looked so good that it became somewhat of a problem. Whenever I was in town white men would stare me into the ground.
After the sit-in, all I could think of was how sick Mississippi whites were. They believed so much in the segregated Southern way of life, they would kill to preserve it [….] I had always hated the whites in Mississippi. Now I knew it was impossible for me to hate sickness. The whites had a disease, an incurable disease in its final stage.
The more I thought about it, the more it seemed that the federal government was directly or indirectly responsible for most of the segregation, discrimination, and poverty in the South.
I sat on the grass and listened to the speakers, to discover we had “dreamers” instead of leaders leading us. Just about every one of them stood up there dreaming. Martin Luther King went on and on talking about his dream. I sat there thinking that in Canton we never had time to sleep, much less dream.
“Why the hell should we be praying all the time? Yes, as a race all we’ve got is a lot of religion. And the white man’s got everything else, including the dynamite[….] Nonviolence is through and you know it.”
I couldn’t believe it, but it was a Klan blacklist, with my picture on it. I guess I must have sat there for about an hour holding it.
I couldn’t understand why I seemed so strange to everyone. […] All of a sudden, I found myself wishing I was in Canton again working in the Movement with people who understood me.
We shall overcome, We shall overcome
We shall overcome some day.
I WONDER. I really WONDER.
