Blog post 2: More than the politics

This week we read a lot about Anne Moody and how she was affected by all the tensions that were surrounding her youth. Anne Moody at points would become almost physically ill thinking all of the injustice that was happening around her and more so than that she would become ill thinking about how all of the adults around her did nothing to stop them. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that everything that we have learned about in history has an actual effect on people. For instance, Anne Moody was still in high school and was affected by the Brown vs. Board of Education supreme court decision.

Due to the nonspecific wording of the ruling, schools were in no rush to integrate so Anne Moody would not end up going to a white high school. However, in her town, the white people organized and built a really nice school so that maybe the black people would not want to integrate because it would be “equal”. I had heard that school districts would do things like this, but when you read about Anne Moody’s life these events really stand out as injustices. White people in the south were so set against their children going to integrated schools that they would spend loads of money to try and prevent it. Today we realize how absolutely absurd that it and how senseless it is to spend all of that money to protect their moronic racism.

I was also really struck by the section where Emma had her foot blown off by Wilbert, yet no one blamed Wilbert instead they blamed the white man. I think the way that Anne Moody explained the situation makes it clear that the injustices were much greater than inconveniences, men really could not get jobs that paid enough to provide to their families. The black freedom struggle was more than a political movement, but it was also a struggle for economic equality. In this section of Anne Moody’s account, I think she wants her audience to see that and while I don’t think anyone excuses Wilbert for his actions I think everyone can sympathize with him and see how this inequality has driven him to a point of almost insanity full of misdirected anger.

In conclusion, Anne Moody’s life put the historical events that we’ve learned about in school into perspective and shows that they had actual effects on real people not just effects on the NAACP and the political movement. Additionally, they affected the economic livelihood of black men and while these men were not slaves they often worked like one and were not compensated nearly enough to work and be treated the way they were.


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