39 pages • 1 hour read
Anne MoodyComing Of Age In Mississippi
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1968A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 22-26Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 22 Summary
NAACP holds its convention in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1963. Mama forbids Moody to go and asks her not to send leaflets in the mail; Mama is afraid of repercussions in Centreville. Moody goes to the convention anyway and gets signatures from the well-known Negroes who attend. She also participates in a sit-in at Woolworth’s lunch counter in Jackson with other white and black Tougaloo students. A white mob slaps Moody, throws her against a counter, and drags her 30 feet by her hair. Other students receive similar treatment.
Moody is arrested when she demonstrates at a post office. The white students are put in separate prison cells from the black students, even though they have been living and working together. Police also arrest 400 high school students. Because the jail is full, the police hold the high school students in a local park, where they do not receive food or beds. Medgar Evers, a NAACP leader, is shot, and Moody finds out later that her Uncle Buck was beaten up as a result of her involvement in the Movement. She enters a white church, is welcomed by the ushers, and then prays with white people for the first time in her life: “I stood there for a good five minutes before I was able to compose myself” (285).
Chapter 23 Summary
Moody becomes involved with Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) in Canton, Mississippi. She learns to know C.O. and Mrs. Chinn, two influential Negroes in Canton. Moody and others, usually teenagers, canvass neighborhoods to encourage Negroes to register to vote. After five teenagers get shot, many black parents no longer want their children involved with voter registration. Moody gives a speech at a NAACP rally and explains that many CORE workers often go days without eating a meal (Moody herself is losing weight), and then local Negroes support the CORE workers with food.
When Moody and her friends hear that white men are planning to kill them, they hide in the backyard of Freedom House. They lie in the grass, terrified, as men pull up to the house. The men realize that no one is inside and look around in the yard: “I had a horrible feeling they could see us as plain as daylight and I just trembled all over” (302). However, the men do not discover Moody and her friends and leave. Another major difficulty for CORE workers in Canton is that the local black ministers do not support the Movement, but Moody is pleased when prominent church members bring CORE workers to the congregations to speak.
Chapter 24 Summary
Moody goes to the March on Washington and is unimpressed by Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech. She thinks King is full of dreams rather than the realities of practical action: “[I]n Canton, we never had time to sleep, much less dream” (307). On the return trip to Mississippi, Reverend Ed King, Mrs. King, Joan Trumpauer, and Moody travel together and stay overnight in a Tennessee park. The next morning, Joan and Moody find the park’s showers, but the two women forget to bring towels. Standing naked, they dry each other off with paper towels, which upsets the white women who enter the showers. The Kings, Joan, and Moody leave the park as several white women come looking for their car.
Chapter 25 Summary
Moody encounters two Canton teenagers who are unable to buy clothes to wear to school. She receives a check that she badly needs, but instead takes the young women shopping and buys them something to eat. The teens go to school the next day. A shipment of clothing arrives for distribution among poor black people, and Moody hopes this will help Negroes trust the Movement. Moody is sad when she does not receive a birthday card from her family, and her friends quietly buy a cake and some ice cream, intending to surprise her.
On the day of Moody’s 23rd birthday, a church is bombed in Birmingham, Alabama, and four black girls die in the blast. Moody wonders why black people should pray and nonviolently respond to mistreatment when white people have all the guns and power. Moody renounces nonviolence: “You know something else, God? Nonviolence is out. I have a good idea Martin Luther King is talking to you, too. If he is, tell him that nonviolence has served its purpose” (318). Negroes are afraid to be in the streets and seem to resent Moody and other CORE workers because voting registration has such dangerous consequences.
Chapter 26 Summary
A young woman named Lenora joins the CORE workers in Canton. She and Moody use the uneaten cake and ice cream to throw a party and to boost the enthusiasm of high school students. Another shipment of clothing arrives for distribution, and Moody is angry when many Negroes get in line to receive used clothing because the same black people show no interest in voting. Moody, Lenora, and Doris decide to throw another party for students, and the principal threatens to expel students to who participate. The teens hold their own rally. The police, hoping to find a reason to undermine the Movement, harass Moody and the young women at Freedom House. Doris and Lenora acquire guns for their protection. The three women become very nervous, and Moody takes pills in order to sleep.
A coalition of civil rights groups in Mississippi (COFO) proposes to have Aaron Henry and Ed King run on a freedom ballot as candidates for governor and lieutenant governor of Mississippi. Although opposed to the Freedom Vote, Moody works to gain support for it. She also works to get loan money for farmers, and a particular policeman targets Moody. She travels to Jackson and discovers her picture on a Klan blacklist: “I guess I must have sat there for about an hour holding it” (339). She feels stressed and burned out, so she decides to take a break from the Movement.
Chapters 22-26 Analysis
As Moody deepens her work with the civil rights movement, she participates in increasingly daring and dangerous actions. Her mother’s resistance to Moody’s involvement in the Movement grows: “She wrote me back a letter, begging me not to take part in the sit-in” (268) (her mother also includes money for a bus ticket with the letter). Besides being angry that her family will not let her live her own life, Moody experiences guilt and hurt at how scared her family is: “I waited to hear in the news that someone in Centreville had been murdered” (269). However, Moody knows that her mother’s fears are justified because the civil rights era in the South presented more dangers for Negroes, and some of them did lose their lives because of their activism.
Throughout the book, Mama has always been reluctant to talk about white people and to discuss racial injustice. As a character, Mama stands for many Negroes who have witnessed or experienced violence—and who would rather not openly resist for fear of retaliation and difficulty. As a single parent, Mama worked hard to provide the basic necessities for her children, including protection. Even though Moody is an adult, Mama still desires safety and protection for her daughter, even if Moody cannot recognize this.
