“I didn’t say that Lillian Jean is better than you. I said Mr. Simms only thinks she is. In fact, he thinks she’s better than Stacey or Little Man or Christopher-John—”
“Just ’cause she’s his daughter?” I asked, beginning to think Mr. Simms was a bit touched in the head. “No, baby, because she’s white.” Mama’s hold tightened on mine, but I exclaimed, “Ah, shoot! White ain’t nothin’!” Mama’s grip did not lessen.
“It is something, Cassie. White is something just like black is something. Everybody born on this earth is something and nobody, no matter what color, is better than anybody else.” “Then how come Mr. Simms don’t know that?” “Because he’s one of those people who has to believe that white people are better than black people to make himself feel big.”
“Baby, we have no choice of what color we’re born or who our parents are or whether we’re rich or poor. What we do have is some choice over what we make of our lives once we’re here.” Mama cupped my face in her hands.
“And I pray to God you’ll make the best of yours.”
Cassie lives with her three brothers, mother, father and grandfather in the Southern US in the 1930s. Her father has work albeit far away working building railway lines and her mother has a job as a teacher. The family also have a farm where they grow cotton and Cassie's grandmother is able to take produce to a local market so unlike other local families the Logan's are not living in dire poverty. They do, however, have to be careful with their money because there is a farm mortgage/tax payment due every month and a local, white, landowner who wants to reclaim their land. Cassie is only vaguely aware of the differences in her community and the ways white adults and children treat her and her family differently. One of the earliest incidents that introduce this to the reader comes when we read that Cassie and her brothers have to walk to school along dusty and sometimes very muddy roads. The white children travel by bus to a different school and every day the horrid bus driver deliberately sprays the Logan kids and their friends with dirt or mud by driving his bus close to the side of the road.
Finally, when the bus was less than fifty feet behind us, it veered dangerously close to the right edge of the road where we were running, forcing us to attempt the jump to the bank; but all of us fell short and landed in the slime of the gully.
Cassie is a feisty girl and she is not prepared to suffer this injustice. She hatches a plan to trap the bus in a huge hole in the road which is disguised by all the mud. Her plan works but then Cassie realises this could put her family in danger. Big Ma her grandmother takes Cassie into the town of Strawberry and on this day Cassie sees even more ways her family suffer discrimination.
There is a local boy named TJ who is 'sort of' a friend to the Logan kids especially Stacey. TJ keeps failing at school but he is filled with bravado. I knew from the start he was a dangerous boy to have as a friend. He 'swindles' Stacey out of his wonderful new coat and then he fails school again and takes his anger out on Mrs Logan. Finally, he joins up with some local white boys but he is so naive he has no idea they are using him and as the book ends it is TJ who is headed for execution.
Two of the strongest scenes in this book (for me) were when Cassie's mother pastes brown paper over the ownership grid at the front of the text books that have been 'donated' to the school.
Then there is a way more harrowing scene where Cassie and her siblings are taken to visit the man who was the victim of the recent lynching:
She took a sheet from a nearby table. “Gots to cover him,” she explained. “He can’t hardly stand to have nothin’ touch him.” When she was visible again, she picked up a candle stump and felt around a table for matches. “He can’t speak no more. The fire burned him too bad. But he understands all right.” Finding the matches, she lit the candle and turned once more to the corner. A still form lay there staring at us with glittering eyes. The face had no nose, and the head no hair; the skin was scarred, burned, and the lips were wizened black, like charcoal. As the wheezing sound echoed from the opening that was a mouth, Mama said, “Say good morning to Mrs. Berry’s husband, children.”
Read the opening scene which gives you a good sense of Cassie's voice:
“Little Man, would you come on? You keep it up and you’re gonna make us late.” My youngest brother paid no attention to me. Grasping more firmly his newspaper-wrapped notebook and his tin-can lunch of cornbread and oil sausages, he continued to concentrate on the dusty road.
He lagged several feet behind my other brothers, Stacey and Christopher-John, and me, attempting to keep the rusty Mississippi dust from swelling with each step and drifting back upon his shiny black shoes and the cuffs of his corduroy pants by lifting each foot high before setting it gently down again. Always meticulously neat, six-year-old Little Man never allowed dirt or tears or stains to mar anything he owned. Today was no exception.
“You keep it up and make us late for school, Mama’s gonna wear you out,” I threatened, pulling with exasperation at the high collar of the Sunday dress Mama had made me wear for the first day of school—as if that event were something special. It seemed to me that showing up at school at all on a bright August-like October morning made for running the cool forest trails and wading barefoot in the forest pond was concession enough; Sunday clothing was asking too much. Christopher-John and Stacey were not too pleased about the clothing or school either.
Only Little Man, just beginning his school career, found the prospects of both intriguing.
There are some delicious descriptions of food in this book and I loved the small phrases used by Mildred D Taylor:
There was little I could do in a dress, and as for shoes, they imprisoned freedom-loving feet accustomed to the feel of the warm earth.
I would wear threadbare clothing washed to dishwater color ...
“Shoot,” I mumbled, taking one of the buckets from Stacey, “by the time a body walk way back here, they’ll have bunions on their soles and corns on their toes.”
Here is a list of the characters in this story.
Description of Mr Morrison (I hope we learn more about him in the subsequent books): The man was a human tree in height, towering high above Papa’s six feet two inches. The long trunk of his massive body bulged with muscles, and his skin, of the deepest ebony, was partially scarred upon his face and neck, as if by fire. Deep lifelines were cut into his face and his hair was splotched with gray, but his eyes were clear and penetrating. I glanced at the boys and it was obvious to me that they were wondering the same thing as I: Where had such a being come from?
This US classic was published in 1977 but I am not sure if many readers of my generation would have encountered this book in Australia.
Awards for Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry:
- Newbery Medal 1977
- National Book Award finalist
- Coretta Scott King Award Honour
Publisher blurb: Set in Mississippi at the height of the Depression, this is the story of one family's struggle to maintain their integrity, pride, and independence in the face of racism and social injustice. And it is also Cassie's story—Cassie Logan, an independent girl who discovers over the course of an important year why having land of their own is so crucial to the Logan family, even as she learns to draw strength from her own sense of dignity and self-respect.
I started reading this book (ebook version) on a train journey to my volunteer library job and I read more than one third of the text but then I decided to leave this book for a week because I needed to be quiet and calm and have the time and emotional strength to cope with the scenes I predicted were coming in this story for example when the family cross the bridge and don't let the white driver go first and Mama says “But one day we’ll have to pay for it. Believe me,” she said, “one day we’ll pay”.
I picked this book up again a week later and then in the early hours of the morning, around 2am, I finished my reading and discovered I now need to read the sequels. I have read The Gold Cadillac and Mississippi Bridge without realising they were part of this series or connected to Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry and I have discovered Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry is actually book four in this series.
- Song of the Trees
- Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
- Let the Circle Be Unbroken
- The Friendship
- The Gold Cadillac
- Mississippi Bridge
- The Road to Memphis
- The Well
- The Land
- All the Days Past, All the Days to Come
