Lecture 14 Coming of Age in Mississippi PDF

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Lecture 14 Coming of Age in Mississippi...

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Lecture 14 – Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi Goals: To begin to answer the following questions: 1)

What are the main ways that Anne Moody’s book deepens our understanding of the Jim Crow South and of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and early 1960s?

To understand the meaning of the following concepts and terms: (In addition to grasping the main themes that I highlight about the book, for the exam you should also treat the following as “key terms.”) 1) Emmett Till 2) Medgar Evers Outline: I. Introduction II. Major Themes that Moody’s Memoir Underscores -- Along with the key terms highlighted below,you will be responsible for mastering how the book illuminates the following themes for the exam, specifically and only as we discuss today in lecture. A. Life in the rural south under Jim Crow 1) Poverty 2) A system enforced in part through violence a. The Murder of the Taplin Family (Chapter 11) b. Emmett Till- grew up in Chicago but had relatives in Mississippi. When he was 14 visiting relatives, he made the mistake of talking to a white woman whose husband owned a grocery store. His friends had dared him to talk to her. The husband vowed revenge. Dragged him out of his house, beat him brutally and then shot him in the head. Body was discovered a few days later. Body was sent back to Chicago. His mom demanded there be an open casket funeral so that the whole world to see the awfulness of jim crow. B. The Civil Rights Movement as a Mass Movement of Multiple Organizations 1) Note Moody’s involvement in the NAACP, SNCC, CORE and COFO - Moody was heavily involved in these orgs -CORE and SNCC were heavily involved to register voters in the south - her life dramatized the fact that the civil rights movement required ll of these organizations to work together 2) Also note her distance from and even skepticism of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Chapter 24) -Moody said we have “dreamers” instead of “leaders” leading us - she said she never had time sleep much less, dream C. The Strategy of Non-Violent Resistance 1) Example of Moody and the Sit-In at Woolworths in Jackson, Mississippi (Chapter 22)

- she writes about how the waitress told them she would be served at the back counter. The waitress turned the lights out and ran to the back of the store. A few students came in and started to heckle them and the other seats were roped off. All hell broke loose. She wanted to use a non violent approach that would spark a crisis and highlight the main issues with Jim Crowe. - Moody and other activist began to question non violent protests. Organizing extremely poor African Americans made them realize the problems were not only political(integration and voting rights), but also economic. Began to think economic needs may need to be met first. By the end of the book, moody begins to doubt if the movement would even succeed D. Growing Frustrations and Doubts as the 1960s Wear On 1) See final pages 2) The decline of non-violent integrations as the clearly dominant mode of African American activism after the mid-1960s. -emphasis on self defense instead of non violence a) The rise of the “Black Power” Movement after 1966 - black nationalist thinking started with Marcus Garvey -Malcom X wanted to focus on rediscovery and taking pride in heritage E. White Resistance to the Movement 1) Terrorist Killings a) The murder of Medgar Evers - Evers was head of NAACP at the time of his death. It was more or less a white terrorist attack against the movement. Took place around midnight June 12,1963. Hours before, president JFK called for a major new piece of Civil Rights legislation that would later become the civil rights act. Democratic party ruled the south at the time. Kennedey needed their support so he tried to resist taking any major stands with civil rights. White officials at riots responded brutaly to civil rights protests in the south. All of this was going on at the height of the cold war. Birmingham was an “international embarrassment”… so Kennedey called for legislation around civil rights. Medgar was shot when he stepped out of his car in his own driveway b) Moody’s fear of retribution in her hometown. - afraid whites would attack her - afraid people would attack members of her family II. Conclusion...