Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry: A Novel

Bibliographic Information: Taylor, M.D. (1976). Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. New York, NY: Dial Press. ISBN: 0590982079

Plot Summary: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is set in rural Mississippi in the 1930's. The story centers around the Logan family who is faced with hardships. Mr. Granger, the wealthiest landowner in the county, attempts to take the Logans' land. Cassie Logan is a nine year old girl who can't understand why whites and blacks don't get along. Thirteen year old Stacey Logan is the oldest sibling and tries to protect the family. Papa Logan is very good hearted but he leaves frequently to work in Louisiana on the railroad tracks and doesn't make enough money to make ends meet for his family. Mama Logan is married to Papa and has four children: Stacey, Cassie, Christopher-John and Little man.

In the story Mama Logan leads a boycott of the Wallace Store. The Wallace family is responsible for a lot of the trouble between and whites and the blacks. The Wallace family are members of the "night men" who do horrible things to blacks during the night. The Wallaces are very influential, though, and people are fearful of them. Towards the end of the novel the "night men" attempt to lynch T.J. (Stacey's fourteen year old friend who gets in trouble and gets arrested) and his family. Papa set fire to his cotton field to stop the lynching and, consequently, lost a quarter of his field.

Critical Evaluation: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is a deeply moving novel full of hardships and horrible events that take place against black people in the South in the 1930's. The reader will learn a lot about what these times were like for black people. The novel is full of hope, though. In the story Uncle Hammer owes money to the banks, so he ends up selling his most prized possession - a silver 1928 Packard. Papa solves the potential lynching of T.J. by setting a fire. The plot is complex and at times somewhat confusing because there are so many characters and sub-plots.

Annotation: Faced with hardships and prejudice, the Logan family survives and brings hope to a rural town in Mississippi in the early 1930's.

About the Author: Mildred Taylor was born in 1942 in Jackson, Mississippi. Her family moved to Ohio because of the racial violence in Jackson. The family still visited the South, and segregation and racial tensions are prevalent in most of Jackson's works. At Taylor's new school in Toledo, Ohio, which was integrated, Mildred was the only black child in her class. Shocked about the lack of African-American history in the textbooks, Mildred shared stories with the class. The students and teachers thought she was making up these stories.

Taylor went to college at the University of Toledo. She wrote her first novel at the age of nineteen. Dark People, Dark World was a story of a blind white man, told in first person, in a black ghetto in Chicago. Unfortunately, it was never published. After college Taylor went into the Peace Corps in Ethiopia and taught history there. When she returned from the Peace Corps, she went to the University of Colorado's Graduate School of Journalism. She joined the Black student Alliance and helped create the black studies program at the university. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry was Taylor's second book and won the Newbery Award. The book was dedicated to Taylor's father. In 1978 a miniseries starring Morgan Freeman was aired on TV based on the novel. Taylor wrote Let the Circle Be Unbroken, published in 1981, which continues the story of the Logan family during the Great Depression. Taylor wrote several other novels and currently resides in Colorado. She has received many awards including the Boston Globe Horn Book Award, the Jane Addams Book Award, the Coretta Scott King Award and the Christopher Award.

Retrieved March 7, 2010 at: http://www.gradesaver.com/author/mildred-taylor/

Genre: Historical Fiction

Curriculum Ties: Social Science, Language Arts, African-American History

Talking Points: What would it be like growing up in racially segregated rural Mississippi in the 1930's? Who are the Night Men and what is their agenda?

Reading Level and Interest Age: 12 and older

Challenge Issues: Even though the content is fictional it is based on reality and it may be found disturbing: violence, racial hatred, language.

Reason for Inclusion: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is consistently in the top "must read" lists for middle school through high school age youth. Much may be learned from the novel, including historical aspects of racism, customs and the language of African Americans.