Violence and the Fight Against It Essay -- Biography

During a freedom march on May 29, 1964 in Canton, Mississippi a boy by the name of McKinley Hamilton was brutally beaten by police to the point of unconsciousness. One of the witnesses of this event, and the author of the autobiography which this paper is written in response to, was Anne (Essie Mae) Moody. This event was just one of a long line of violent experiences of Moody’s life; experiences that ranged from her own physical domestic abuse to emotional and psychological damage encountered daily in a racist, divided South. In her autobiography Moody not only discusses in detail the abuses in her life, but also her responses and actions to resist them. The reader can track her progression in these strategies throughout the various stages of her life; from innocent childhood, to adolescence at which time her views from a sheltered childhood began to unravel and finally in adulthood when she took it upon herself to fight back against racial prejudice. As a child, Moody was sheltered by her parents from the racial violence that was so prominent in the southern United States. However, she was subjected to domestic abuse and physiological violence growing up. Her parents both worked as farmers, so as a result Moody and her sibling, later siblings, were often left alone during the days. During these times they were often looked after by their young uncle George Lee who, still being a child himself caused a lot of torment for Anne and her sister, leading to one of the few times where her dad physically beat her. When she started school at the age of five the threat of physical violence against her followed. Her teacher, Reverend Cason, threatened the students with violence if they misbehaved although â€Å"[h]e never did whip [Anne]. [... ...aced with tremendous abuse and violence in various forms. However as she matured, her awareness of the specific racial violence, rampant throughout the region, grew as did her method of combating and resisting it. In the end, no matter which method she used to resist this violence, whether it be through ignoring it or actively fighting against it, it always found a way to impact her. Although, similar to the sources used for our second paper, Anne’s account of events in her life has never been fully verified and the fact that she can clearly remember events and dialog from such a young age can breed a lot of skepticism. This could also be seen as a sign of just how effected she was by the various forms of violence throughout her life, long after any physical scars had healed. Works Cited Moody, A. (1968) Coming of Age in Mississippi. New York, NY: Bantam Dell