During a freedom march on May 29, 1964 in Canton, Mississippi, a boy named McKinley Hamilton was brutally beaten by police until he was unconscious. One of the witnesses to this event, as well as the author of the autobiography to which this article responds, was Anne (Essie Mae) Moody. This event was just one in a long series of violent experiences in Moody's life; experiences ranging from domestic physical abuse to the emotional and psychological harm encountered daily in a racist and divided South. In his autobiography Moody not only talks in detail about the abuse in his life, but also about his responses and actions to resist it. The reader can follow his progression in these strategies throughout the various stages of his life; from innocent childhood, to adolescence, when his visions of a protected childhood began to crumble, and finally into adulthood when he took it upon himself to fight racial prejudice. As a child, Moody was protected by her parents from the racial violence that was so prevalent in the Southern United States. However, she was subjected to domestic abuse and physiological violence during her childhood. Both of his parents worked as farmers, so as a result Moody and his brother, later brothers, were often left alone during the day. During these times they were often looked after by their young uncle George Lee who, being still a child himself, caused Anne and her sister much torment, leading to one of the few times her father physically beat her. When she started school at the age of five, threats of physical violence against her followed. Her teacher, Reverend Cason, threatened the students with violence if they misbehaved, even though he "never whipped [Anne]. [...... middle of paper ...... accompanied by tremendous abuse and violence in various forms. However, as he matured, his awareness of the specific racial violence rampant throughout the region grew as did his method of combating and resisting it. Ultimately, no matter what method she used to resist this violence, whether by ignoring it or actively fighting it, she always found a way to impact it. However, similar to the sources used for our second article, Anne's account of events in her life has never been fully verified and the fact that she can clearly remember events and dialogue from such a young age can generate a lot of skepticism. This could also be seen as a sign of how affected she was by various forms of violence throughout her life, long after the physical scars had healed. Works Cited Moody, A. (1968) Coming of Age in Mississippi. New York, New York: Bantam Dell