Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor

First published: 1976

Type of work: Historical fiction

Themes: Family, race and ethnicity, social issues, and friendship

Time of work: 1933-1934

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Locale: Spokane County, Mississippi

Principal Characters:

• Cassie Logan, an outspoken, self-confident, and inquisitive nine-year-old black girl
• Stacey Logan, her thoughtfully considerate older brother, a staunch leader and protector of his siblings
• Christopher-John Logan, Cassie’s sensitive seven-year-old brother, who often acts as mediator
• Clayton Chester Logan (Little Man), her pridefully clean and manly youngest brother
• Mary Logan, Cassie’s college-educated, courageous, and spirited mother, who holds a job as a teacher
• David Logan, Cassie’s father, an astute and industrious man who seeks justice and independence for his family and neighbors
• Hammer Logan, Cassie’s ill-tempered uncle, who has come from Chicago to visit
• T. J. Avery, Stacey’s friend and classmate, a deviously cunning but not-too-bright fourteen-year-old black boy
• Jeremy Simms, a white boy who befriends Cassie and her brothers
• Lillian Jean Simms, Jeremy’s bigoted sister, who causes Cassie public humiliation
• Harlan Granger, a wealthy white landowner who seeks to own the Logan land
• Wade Jamison, a wealthy “Old South” white attorney who befriends the Logans

The Story

While the central focus of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is on the efforts of the Logan family to keep the four hundred acres of land they have owned since Reconstruction, several issues of racial justice and equality are explored. The story unfolds as a series of social conflicts and race relationships observed and sometimes experienced by Cassie Logan.

The first day of school for Cassie and her brothers begins with two incidents that establish for the reader the feelings between blacks and whites in this rural community. First, during their two-mile walk to school, the children are run off the road by the driver of a school bus loaded with white children. Little Man, on his very first day in school, is nearly run down as the other children scud from the road. He and Cassie await new textbooks, only to be given ones with badly worn covers and marred pages that have already been used for eleven years in the elementary school for white children. When Little Man and Cassie refuse the books, they are punished by their teacher. Their mother, however, agrees with them but is forced to resolve the problem by covering the backs of the books.

During a rainy-day walk to school, the Logan children, along with Stacey’s classmate and friend T. J. and his brother Claude (Christopher-John’s friend), are forced to jump into a muddy, rain-swollen ditch to avoid being run down by a school bus. Stacey devises a plan whereby he, Cassie, Christopher-John, and Little Man secretly dig a pothole in the road. This causes the bus to break an axle.

Cassie experiences fear when she sees the “night riders,” a band of white men similar to the Ku Klux Klan in intent and mien, who menace the lives of the black sharecroppers, burning their farms and otherwise destroying their property. Unlike the others, however, she and her family are not passively resigned to the violent, racist acts that are accepted by most black families as a way of life.

Sheltered by the love and security she finds at home, Cassie learns of the world outside the Logan family on her first trip to the nearby town of Strawberry. White farmers sell their crops from wagons set in stalls. The owner of this whites-only marketplace waits on white people, including children, before he waits on black people, regardless of their age and place in the community. Cassie is humiliated when she is pushed off the sidewalk by Mr. Simms, whose daughter, Lillian Jean, she had accidentally bumped in the tumult of the market. Lillian Jean’s brother, Jeremy, had befriended Cassie and her family; instead of riding the school bus (as a white boy, this was his “right”), he accompanied them to school each day. Cassie resolves the incident at the marketplace by condescending to Lillian Jean’s haughty attitude while learning her secrets. She then provokes a fight with Lillian, threatening her with harm if she does not keep their talk secret.

The arrival of Uncle Hammer for a Christmas visit and Cassie’s father from his work on the railroad brings joy to the Logan family. The adults’ concerns highlight the complex problems of race relations in this rural community, which cannot be resolved as swiftly as Cassie’s and her brothers’ acts of retaliation can be taken.

There is concern about the frequent visits of Harlan Granger to force Cassie’s grandmother to sell the Logan land, which borders his. Cassie’s mother has encouraged the sharecropper families to boycott the Wallace store because of the Wallaces’ involvement in the burnings and night rides. They also encourage black teenagers to dance and drink alcoholic beverages at their store. With help from Mr. Jamison, the family attorney, credit is obtained for the sharecroppers at a mercantile store in Vicksburg. Many of the families initially take advantage of this opportunity and Cassie’s father makes the long trips to purchase their goods.

Then, a series of events threaten the security of the Logan family. First, Mrs. Logan discovers T. J. cheating on an exam. T. J. tells Mr. Wallace about the covered textbooks and lies about Mrs. Logan’s teaching practices, which gets her fired. Next, Mr. Logan is shot by attackers and suffers a broken leg while returning from Vicksburg. Finally, the bank calls up the note for full payment of the mortgage on the Logan land. The dignity and pride of the Logans is clearly evident as they endure these hardships: Mrs. Logan accepts the loss of her teaching position, the mortgage is paid in full, and Mr. Logan gradually recuperates from the violent attack. The matter of T. J., however, is not as easily resolved.

Cassie has always considered T. J. a fool for believing that the white teenagers were his friends. One night, he accompanies them to the mercantile store, where they rob and commit murder. T. J. alone is blamed for the crimes, although his only mistake had been the lack of judgment that Cassie had perceived. He is saved from a lynch mob when Mr. Logan sets fire to his own cotton field, which abuts Mr. Granger’s property. This creates a great commotion, as the night riders must now put out the fire. T. J. goes to jail and must stand trial for murder. The trial is covered in a sequel entitled Let the Circle Be Unbroken (1981).

Cassie matures during the events of this year. While she was never fond of T. J., she is concerned about his fate and fate of their land.

Context

Taylor introduced the Logan family in Song of the Trees (1975) and carried on their story in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, a Newbery Award winner. Let the Circle Be Unbroken (1981) is its direct sequel, which follows the tragic trial of T. J. and carries Cassie’s family saga into 1935. The Friendship (1987) provides a glimpse into the youth of John Wallace, the owner of the Wallace store. In The Road to Memphis (1989), Cassie is finishing high school. Jeremy Simms, a neighbor and would-be friend of the Logan children, is the protagonist in Taylor’s Mississippi Bridge (1990). In each of her books Taylor creates a rich and vivid chronicle of the lives of members of the Logan family, while giving insight into the relationships with both black and white people of their community.

Many critics question the authenticity and merits of books of historical fiction about black Americans that examine issues that are still sensitive. While many points of criticism may be valid, there is literary merit in such books as William Armstrong’s Sounder (1969), in which the boy’s strength and courage can be compared to Stacey’s. In Ouida Sebestyen’s Words by Heart (1979), the father is reminiscent of David Logan as his integrity, fortitude, and love serve as a foundation for family unity. The friendship enjoyed by John, who is black, and Pluto, a white boy, in Pat Edwards’ Little John and Plutie (1988) is indicative of the relationships that could exist in the unrequited friendship of Jeremy Simms and the Logan children. Taylor has vividly explored a realm of American life that is etched in a region as deeply as the social mores of its people.

The image of the black family in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is familiar to most families. The personal, significant, yet dangerous triumphs of the Logan family are universal in appeal. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry has characters that will continue to interest all children.

Bibliography

Cobb, Cicely Denean. “’If You Give a Nigger an Inch, They Will Take an Ell’: The Role of Education in Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, and Let the Circle be Unbroken. ” In Exploring Culturally Diverse Literature for Children and Adolescents: Learning to Listen in New Ways, edited by Darwin L. Henderson and Jill P. May. Boston: Pearson Allyn and Bacon, 2005. Compares the representation of education in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry with that in Taylor’s later novel. Discusses the importance of representing childhood education in literature for children.

Fogelman, Phyllis J. “Mildred D. Taylor.” The Horn Book Magazine 53 (August, 1977): 410-414. A brief description of Taylor’s early life and the influences on her first two books.

Harper, Mary Turner. “Merger and Metamorphosis in the Fiction of Mildred D. Taylor.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 13, no. 1 (Summer, 1988): 75-80. Harper analyzes the communal oral and musical tradition in Taylor’s novels and states that the tradition “infuses Mildred Taylor’s work, resulting in an imaginative blending of history, cultural traditions and practices so as to create a sequential bildungsroman in four works.”

Peterson, Linda Kauffman, and Marilyn Leathers Solt. Newbery and Caldecott Medal and Honor Books: An Annotated Bibliography. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982. The authors identify most of the novel’s strengths: “Although the family’s problems are not solved by the book’s end, spunky Cassie and her brothers have experienced some triumphs in the racist society in which they live. These bring both humor and satisfaction to a story that has many grim and frightening moments.”

Rees, David. “The Color of Skin: Mildred Taylor.” In The Marble in the Water: Essays on Contemporary Writers of Fiction for Children and Young Adults. Boston: The Horn Book, 1980. A comparative study that asserts that Taylor “comes closer than anyone else to giving us a really good novel about racial prejudice.”

Taylor, Mildred D. “Newbery Award Acceptance: Address.” The Horn Book Magazine 53 (August, 1977): 401-409. Taylor describes the origins of her prize-winning novel, which she says is “about human pride and survival in a cruelly racist society.”