Coming Of Age In Mississippi

Because of the house fire a few years ago, Moody and her siblings have no birth certificates, so Mama applies for new ones. Moody’s new certificate arrives with an incorrect name. Instead of “Essie Mae Moody,” the certificate says “Annie Mae Moody.” Moody persuades her mother to allow her to keep the new name. Moody, now Anne, graduates third in her eighth grade class, one percentage point lower than Darlene.

Raymond’s farming has not gone well. He goes to California to look for a job but is unsuccessful and returns to Mississippi. Linda Jean and her husband move to a bigger house, and Mrs. Burke offers Moody a job. Moody is afraid of Mrs. Burke, but she accepts Mrs. Burke’s offer because of her family’s financial situation: “I knew I had to take that job, I had to help secure a plate of dry beans if nothing else” (116). Mrs. Burke attempts to make Moody enter her house only through the back door, but Moody deliberately comes to the front door every morning. Mrs. Burke’s mother lets her in. 

A week before Moody begins high school, Emmett Till is killed. She overhears schoolboys talking about the murder and asks who the dead boy is, but they do not tell her. She asks her mother, who reacts angrily by saying that the schoolboys should not be talking about Emmett Till. Mama says Moody should do housework for Mrs. Burke as if nothing has happened: “And don’t you let on like you know nothing about that boy being killed” (123). Mama seems scared, and Moody is nervous around Mrs. Burke. Mrs. Burke asks Moody directly if she has heard about the 14-year-old boy who was killed. Moody answers no, and Mrs. Burke says that he was killed because “he got out of his place with a white woman” (125).

Moody goes home that evening feeling frightened in a way that she had not experienced before. Mrs. Burke starts holding guild meetings with other women in her home. Moody overhears them talking about the NAACP. Moody asks Mama what this organization is, but Mama says never to repeat that word around any white person. Moody asks Mrs. Rice, her teacher, what the NAACP is. Mrs. Rice explains and invites Moody for Sunday dinner, but she also makes Moody promise not to repeat the information.

Emmett Till’s murder stirs up the white people in Centreville. Mrs. Burke goes to many guild meetings, and the guild membership significantly increases. The white housewives begin firing their maids and watching their husbands carefully: “The young white housewife didn’t dare leave one [a Negro girl] alone in the house with her loyal and obedient husband. She was afraid that the Negro girl would seduce him, never the contrary” (130). There is a rumor of a Negro man making threatening phone calls to a white woman, so white men beat Jerry, a classmate of Moody’s, with a leather strap when they see him using a phone at a particular service station, even though he told the men he did not make the phone call.

In the middle of the night, Moody awakes to hear screaming outside. Moody, Mama, and Raymond go to see what is happening. A house is on fire, and Moody and the neighborhood discover that the entire Taplin family has burned to death. The air is thick with black smoke and the odor of gasoline. Moody can also smell the burned bodies. Stories circulate about the origin of the fire. One is that a kerosene lamp started the fire, but no one believes that; the house burned quickly on all four sides. The most credible story is that the Taplins’ neighbor, Mr. Banks, a light-skinned Negro, was romantically involved with a white woman. After the fire, Mr. Banks leaves town and so does the white woman. The fire affects Moody deeply, and she needs a break from Centreville. She decides to spend the summer in Baton Rouge with her Uncle Ed and his family.