Blacks, Whites and Racial Hierarchy
Anne Moody’s memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi, chronicles her experiences growing up in the racially segregated American South during the 1950s and 1960s. In her telling, Blacks and whites both upheld the racial hierarchy. As a result, her memoir is nuanced and shaded, though smoldering with anger against the white-supremacist violence that dissuaded many blacks from resistance. By showing the intimidating effect of racial violence, Moody documents the moral compromise and loss of hope that made her coming-of-age a loss of innocence, both for herself and for her people.
In Moody’s world, whites disrespected and distrusted Blacks. This animus took a range of forms, from petty discrimination to deadly violence. “The young white housewife didn’t dare leave one alone in the house with her loyal and obedient husband. She was afraid that the negro girl would seduce him, never the contrary.” Black men, for their part, were not allowed to work in white homes at all, and could find work mainly as janitors. Blacks were not only denied basic rights but even routinely murdered because they were viewed as inferior: The execution of Emmett Till, the burning of the Taplin family house, and the murder of Samuel O’Quinn scarred Moody. “I guess Negroes aren’t considered human,’ I thought. They’re just shot and butchered like hogs.”
Terrorized Blacks often conformed to the expectations whites set for them. By complying with the norms and teaching their children to do so, Blacks acquiesced in an omnipresent culture of obedience. Black parents taught their kids how to act “respectfully” towards whites, for their own safety. Witnessing Moody’s nonchalant, light-hearted interactions with a white woman, her mother questioned her way of talking to whites. “I knew for a fact that she didn’t like them treating me like their equal.” It would be dangerous for Anne to get used to being treated equally, because equality was exactly what Southern whites did not want Blacks to have.
Blacks self-segregated from whites, not only because of white norms, but also because of their own. Black parents communicated a strong dislike of whites to their children, perhaps in the attempt to help them understand why they ought to be careful around them. “They passionately disliked most of the whites in Woodville and were against me working for them. ‘I don’t want you working for these no-good ass white men around here,’ Daddy said bitterly. ‘They don’t do nothing but mess over those Negro girls working in their houses.’” When Anne was not feeling well, her father refused to take her to the hospital because he feared what would happen if they sought care from a white doctor.
Moody’s memoir is truly a coming of age in Mississippi, for by the time she heads off to college, the mere possibility of innocence seems lost. “Um leavin’ this town,” she declares as she plans to move away. “Ain’t nobody no good here, black or white.” The psychological and institutional forces that inscribed white supremacy in the American South coated almost everyone with guilt, including Moody herself. “I hated myself and every Negro in Centreville,” she confesses, “for not putting a stop to the killings or at least putting up a fight in an attempt to stop them.” While testifying to the resilience and courage of those who did resist, Moody also reminds us of the soul-rape experienced by everyday people who felt compelled to submit to their oppressors just to get by.
