Civil Rights Analysis

Adam Johnson

GWS 215

Civil Rights Analysis

Civil Rights Analysis

Countless number of women have played extremely important roles in the growth and

development of African American civil rights within the United States. Since the 1800’s women

have been fighting for these equal rights and continue to do so presently. Now, 51 years after

Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. had met in Washington D.C. during a Senate Debate on

the Civil Rights Act of 1954 sits an African American man in the White House appointed as

President of the United States and appointed next to him as first lady is an African American

woman.

It’s quite astonishing to think that just some 60 years prior a young girl by the name of

Essie May Moody, who we would later know as Anne Moody, was growing up on a plantation

in rural Mississippi in an area plagued by extreme poverty and racism. Her father had left the

family for another woman, one of much lighter complexion than her mother. This lead Anne and

her mother a woman named Toosweet to work as maids for a number of white families. Among

these white families different relationships and interactions happened daily, one family in

particular actually had taken a real liking to Anne and would encourage and support her with her

education.

I believe that Anne’s interactions with these white families on such a personal basis

was what was able to mold her into such a driven and determined young woman fighting towards

equal rights for African Americans, I say that because she was able to see both sides of the fence.

For one she grew up on a plantation and was able to understand the position that the black race

had been subjected too but was also able to see the White race and how they lived and viewed

blacks as inferior. I also think other incidents that woke her up as far as being confronted with

the issue of skin color within the black community was when she visited her grandmother’s

house and met...