Chapter Summaries, Part 1 of 4, Coming of Age in Mississippi, by Anne Moody

Book Summary

The book is divided into four parts:

1) Childhood

2) High School

3) College

4) The Movement

Below are the most important events in each of these four parts of the novel and how they affect Anne Moody and her coming of age.

Part One: Childhood

Chapter 1

Anne (Essie Mae) lives with her mother, her father, her sister Adline, and her brother Junior on "Mr. Carter's plantation." Although the story is set in the late 1940's, the reader can't tell from the first page of the novel exactly what time period the story is in. It sounds like it could be any time - before or after the civil war and reconstruction. Moody begins the book this way in order to show the timelessness of black oppression in America. 

The first major event: George Lee, Essie Mae's cousin who is babysitting for her and her siblings, burns down the family's house in a fit of anger and blames it on Essie Mae. When Daddy gets home, Essie Mae gets punished for a crime she didn't commit. This foreshadows the injustice and tyranny that will always lurk in Essie Mae's life.

Chapter 2

Essie Mae's parents separate. Her dad abandons her pregnant mom for a "yellow woman," a mulatto Florence who "holds herself high and mighty" because she is not fully black. Essie Mae's mom is a strong woman, a survivor. After much crying and pain, she manages to find a job in the city and supports her four kids on her cafe salary. Essie Mae's strength throughout the novel is definitely influenced her mother's resourcefulness and ability to survive in the face of poverty and crisis. 

Chapter 3

Essie Mae visits the house of her grandmother (Winnie) with her Uncle Ed, and she finds two white-looking boys, Sam and Walter, who are also sons of Winnie and are her uncles. She is confused because she doesn't know why her uncles look white. Her mother is snappy with her when she asks her why. This is one of the first times she is confronted with the difference in skin color in her life.

Chapter 4

The next time she is confronted with the issue of race is when she makes friends with a few white neighbors as a kid and goes to see movies with them. She discovers that she is not allowed to go to the regular seats with the white kids but must go to the balcony with the black people. She doesn't understand what made her white playmates different from her and why they have better toys than she does. She tries playing "doctor" and examines them to find an answer but is unable to do so. This shows Essie Mae's early concern with the question of race, an issue which she spends her whole life pondering over and fighting for.

Chapter 5

Essie Mae begins working for white ladies starting when she's 9 years old in order to help out with the family. She works for many employers, some kind and some nasty. Her first employer paid her two nickels a week and some disgusting sour milk that has been lapped up by cats.

There's Linda Jean, a very nice white employer, and her mother Mrs. Burke who is a terrible control freak white supremacist. But the employer that influences Essie Mae the most is Mrs. Clairborne, who treats Essie Mae like a daughter and allows her to eat at the table with the white family and teaches Essie Mae about the white world. Essie Mae is different from her peers and from her family because of her education from Mrs. Clairborne and her white employers. She learns early on what race means in America, and that is why she is so much more concerned about the issue of race than her mother and her friends. 

Chapter 6

Mama has a long affair with a man named Raymond. She has three kids with Raymond but Raymond would not marry her. Raymond's mother, Miss Pearl, did not like Mama. Miss Pearl was also "yellow" and bigotted about being less black than Mama. Finally, Raymond and Mama do get married, but Raymond is a coward and never ever finds the courage to stand up to his mother.

Mama, Raymond, and the kids move in next to Miss Pearl and her family. Essie Mae is set in eternal competition with Darlene, a girl her age who is a granddaughter of Miss Pearl in the house next door. Mama tries really hard to get Miss Pearl to like her, but is never able to do so, and is always really sad. Raymond never stands up for Mama. 

Chapter 7

Trying to get on Miss Pearl's good side, Mama joins Miss Pearl's church and gets Essie Mae to do so too. Essie Mae does very well in Sunday school and gets very involved in the church community. But Mama wasn't happy because Miss Pearl was still mean to her and would not accept her. After one really bad Sunday, Mama decides to go to back to her old Church at Centreville and forces Essie Mae to go back with her too.

Chapter 8

Raymond tries to farm. It's a difficult process. He buys land cheap, only to find the land is loaded with hand grenades and mines from the war. He tills through the land and plants cotton. The cotton grows okay but they don't make nearly enough money from it. Essie Mae works one summer on the farm. She hates the sun and is dreadfully afraid of getting a sun stroke. She decides when she grows up she would never be a farmer because she wants to get out of this black system of poverty. She doesn't want to live her life like my mother and Raymond.

"I knew if I got involved in farming, I'd be just like Mama and the rest of them, and that I would never have the chance." (p.89)

Chapter 9

Linda Jean, an employer of Essie Mae, is a poor white woman. She treats Essie Mae nicely, but her mother, Mrs. Burke is terribly white-supremacist. She insists on Essie Mae's calling Linda Jean '"'Mrs. Jenkins.'"' When Essie Mae works for Mrs. Burke, Mrs. Burke tries to do everything and anything to break Essie Mae's spirit and make Essie do things her way (ex. The correct way to iron shirts; using the back door instead of the front). But Essie Mae persists and eventually tires out Mrs. Burke. Essie Mae's strength and stubbornness is reflected in her struggle with Mrs. Burke.

Chapter 10

Essie Mae is a beautiful young girl and wins homecoming queen in 8th grade. In the process she fundraises a lot of money for her school with the help of her homeroom and her homeroom teacher. She learns a lot about organizing people from this experience, a skill she will use later on in the Black Empowerment Movement. Daddy buys her a beautiful blue dress for her homecoming parade.

Chapter Summaries, Part 2 of 4, Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody

Below are the most important events in each of these four parts of the novel and how they affect Anne Moody and her coming of age. 

Part Two: High School

Chapter 11

One HUGE event which affects Essie Mae, whose name is now changed to Anne, is the murder of a young boy, Emmitt Till. Emmitt Till was 14 and was visiting Mississippi from Chicago. He allegedly whistled at a white woman and was killed by white men. Anne is really bothered by this issue and can't sleep or work for days.  

Chapter 12

Anne overhears her employer, Mrs. Burke, speak about the NAACP with her "Guild" (her group of white-supremacist friends). Anne asks her mother what NAACP is and her mother told her she shouldn't know, so she asks her teacher, Mrs. Rice. Mrs. Rice tells her what it is and helps her develop an understanding of black/white America. Later, Mrs. Rice is fired. Mrs. Rice was the first guiding light for Anne to the Movement. 

Chapter 13

Other unfair black/white incidents: Bess and Mr. Fox, Jerry and the operator woman, the Taplin family house burnt down, Benty and Rosetta. All these incidents show how interracial relationships lead to violence. 

Chapter 14

Anne tutors Mrs. Burke's son, Wayne, and Wayne's friends in algebra. Wayne starts to have a crush on Anne and Mrs. Burke is furious. Anne eventually quits because Mrs. Burke was making life difficult for her. An equal relationship between a black female and a white male was virtually impossible. 

Chapter 15

In order to keep herself from going crazy with all these terrible things happening around her, Anne busies herself with doing lots of extra-curricular activities at school: basketball, tumbling, piano, working for white ladies. She is very smart, gets straight A's, and does very well in school. Anne shows herself to be a girl of immense potential. 

Chapter 16

The Principle of her high school, Principle Willis is an Uncle Tom. Samuel O'Quinn, a black empowerment activist and NAACP member was trying to secretly organize a meeting in Centreville, and Principle Willis tattled on him. Samuel O'Quinn was shot by white men. Anne develops an intense hatred Principle Willis and "Uncle Toms" like him. 

Chapter 17

Over the summer, Anne goes to New Orleans to live with her Uncle Ed in hopes of finding a high-paying job as a waitress. She finds that a good job is hard to come by. At first, she is ripped off of two-week’s worth of work by Mrs. Jetson, a poor white lady. Then she goes and works as a scab worker at a slaughterhouse of chickens. She is sickened so much by this experience that she doesn't eat chickens for years after. She also goes back to school feeling more mature than the other kids because of what she had to go through and what she understands of the world after working behind the picket fence. The next summer (summer of sophomore year) she goes back and scab workers were no longer needed, but she finds a job with Grandma Winnie in a restaurant. She is a gorgeous girl and all the boys find her very attractive. She is promoted from dishwashing, to busgirl, eventually to a waitress, and she learns about every aspect of the restaurant business from cooking to managing money – another leadership skill for her. She also meets among her coworkers Lola and Lily White, two gay men who she befriends. Lily White is a queer strip club dancer. Lola teaches her to dress nicely and accentuate her body.

Chapter 18

Everyone is attracted to Essie Mae when she comes back home from New Orleans, including her basketball coach, Mr. Hicks, and her stepfather, Raymond. Essie Mae gets especially pissed off at Raymond one day for being a horny, lazy ass, and blows a fuse. She threatens to kill him with a piece of glass. Then she runs away from home and gets the racist sheriff, Cassidy, to pick up her clothes from Raymond and her mother's house. She moves away to her Daddy's house.

Chapter 19

Daddy's new wife, Emma, is a strong woman whom Anne learns to love. She goes with Emma to dinner with Emma's family. Emma is full of energy and warmth. Unlike Raymond, Emma stands up to her "yellow" family and makes her family love Anne's Daddy. Emma's brother-in-law Wilbert gets in a huge fight with his wife over financial issues and threatens to kill his wife. Emma gets in the way and as a result has her foot shot off by Wilbert.

Daddy carries Emma to the truck with a "supernatural force" and the reader knows that Daddy really loves Emma. Emma is good-natured in the hospital. She did not blame Wilbert for her injury but "put the blame where it belonged," on the white people and the American society which make life so difficult for Wilbert and his family.

Chapter Summaries, Part 3 of 4, Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody

Book Summary

The book is divided into four parts:

1) Childhood

2) High School

3) College

4) The Movement

Below are the most important events in each of these four parts of the novel and how they affect Anne Moody and her coming of age.

Part Three: College

Chapter 20

Out of high school, Anne tries to go to college but realizes she can't pay for it. She gets a basketball scholarship to Natchez College, an ugly little college in Mississippi. She becomes the star of the basketball team, but she gets in an argument with Miss Adams, the dean's secretary, in a challenge of authority. The President agreed with Anne in the dispute and this pisses off Miss Adams who is a manager of the basketball team. She makes life miserable for Anne. This shows Anne's strength and her courage to stand up for what she thought was right, no matter the risks. 

Chapter 21

Anne has a boyfriend, Keemp, and they kiss for the first time. She is very prude about guys although she is incredibly gorgeous and sought after by many. 

Also, in Natchez College, Anne starts a boycott of the school cafeteria when maggots are found in the grits. The cook, Miss Harris, is a nasty old woman who knew that the food was spoiled but didn't care. The protest goes up to the President and the President once again agrees with Anne. This protest is a prelude to the sit-in's that she will be doing during the movement. Anne graduates Natchez with straight A"'"s, as usual, and this impresses to President very much. The President recommends her to acquire a scholarship at Tougaloo, the top black college in Mississippi. 

Chapter 22

In Tougaloo, Anne quickly becomes involved with the NAACP and the SNCC. She attends the famous Woolworth sit-in and after this becomes bound with the black empowerment movement. Meanwhile, her mother writes her letters telling her to stop her involvement with such stupid organizations. Her mother is afraid of her family being killed by white supremacists at Centreville. The difference between Anne and her mother becomes apparent: Anne hopes for change and reform, but her mother is so settled in with the ways of racial etiquette and the fear for her life, she cannot believe in change. She tells Anne that black people will always have to deal with the misery in life, and after Anne dies (and she will die soon because she is involved with such a dangerous cause) life will remain the same for black people. Anne doesn't believe her and continues working for the civil rights movement.

Chapter Summaries, Part 4 of 4, Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody

Book Summary

The book is divided into four parts:

1) Childhood

2) High School

3) College

4) The Movement

Below are the most important events in each of these four parts of the novel and how they affect Anne Moody and her coming of age.

Part Four: The Movement

23. Anne spontaneously decides to sit-in at a bus stop and almost gets herself killed by an angry white mob. She participates in many protests thereafter and works with many famous black empowerment leaders such as Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther King.

24. Anne works in Canton, Mississippi for the cause of voter registration. It's very frustrating work and she suffers a huge burden from fear and pressure. People involved in the movement die left and right. Anne finds herself on a KKK black list. She fears for her life. She also finds that her family is afraid to communicate with her. When she finally quits her job in Canton and goes back to her family, she sees how complacent they are with their situation and that frustrates her as well. Her family treats her like a stranger and thinks her selfish for endangering them by getting involved in the Movement. She is miserable and doesn't fit in anywhere. She graduates from Tougaloo and no one goes to her graduation. Her sister Adline gives her a pretty green dress.

25. The story ends with the murder of McKinley in front of a gathered group of a gathered group of nonviolent civil rights activists. Tired Anne Moody wonders if things will change.