Four little girls had been killed. In her prayers, Moody let her frustration come out; "You know something else, God? Nonviolence is out," Moody stated. "And if I ever find out you are white, then I'm through with you," she went on, "from now on, I'm my own God."

As time went on, President Kennedy was killed, and her faith in humanity was now in serious jeopardy. Her disillusionment wasn't so much that Kennedy didn't do enough to quell the white-perpetrated violence against blacks, but that now someone had shot Kennedy himself. And upon graduation, when families gathered to honor their children who had finished college, not a single member of her family attended the ceremony; "here I am...alone, all alone as I have been for a long time" (342) she wrote. Still, Moody is coming to terms with her own maturity, and with her place in the world. She...
[ View Full Essay]