Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

1977 Newbery Medal

     In 1963, in defense of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. identified one catalyzing component as the black man’s “recognition that one hundred years had passed since emancipation, with no profound effect on his plight” (King, 2000, p. 11). In Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Mildred D. Taylor illuminates that plight, rooted in prejudice and encapsulated by poverty, in the struggle of nine-year old Cassie Logan and her family in rural Mississippi. Her fictional narrative, set thirty years before King’s impassioned plea for social justice, accurately depicts the deeply entrenched hatred and bitterness underlying Jim Crow laws and the social structures that ensnared most black families in a state comparable to the slavery of their African ancestors. Taylor’s intermittent dangling of hope with Jeremy and Mr. Jamison, Christmas feasts, the Wallace boycott and Uncle Hammer’s shiny Packard is overshadowed by her unrelenting and merciless crescendo of racially motivated injustices and crimes against the blacks of Cassie’s sagaciously-named Jefferson Davis county. Even in the novel’s resolution and the brief prophetic imagery of racial equality, I am left, as I think Taylor intended, with my own indignation and tears as a more subdued but wiser Cassie finds her grief; “And I cried for those things which had happened in the night and would not pass” (Taylor, 2016/1976, p. 276).

     In the barrage of physical threats and economic warfare against the black community, I quickly recognized in Taylor’s masterful storytelling how each character depicted a different response to white supremacy. Miss Crocker readily identifies with, even perpetuates to her black students, the misconception that they are innately inferior and less-deserving than their white neighbors. Mr. Avery, in his coughing fits and diminished physicality epitomizes learned helplessness. And of course, Mama, Papa, Big Ma and Uncle Hammer all show Cassie and her brothers the power of sacrifice, education, perseverance and sometimes restraint in fighting atrocity and its debilitating effects. In fact, in the characters of Little Man, Christopher-John, Cassie and Stacey, we get glimpses of that movement from optimism to fear to indignation to understanding that distinguishes the Logan’s response to hatred and discrimination. As Cassie and Stacey learn their hard lessons, they become wiser but not accepting of the racially-charged culture of the South, finding individual ways to resist their oppressors without losing their freedom. Embedded in the experiences of Cassie and her family is also a loud and unmistakable call for education, with white power and likewise black submission rooted in ignorance and misunderstanding. Taylor further conceptualizes knowledge in alternating ways throughout the novel; knowledge yields power but sometimes knowledge must be withheld for protection. Such are the powerful complexities and nuances that create a work of children’s literature that is as rewarding as it is heart-breaking and as optimistic as it is tragic.

     A year ago, I read Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule by Harriette Gillem Robinet to my nine-year old daughter. A 1999 winner of the Scott O’Dell award for historical fiction, it was a rich read-aloud to explore the realities of Reconstruction in the aftermath of the Civil War. However, I wanted to find a book that could close the gap between the failures of Reconstruction and the words of Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s. Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry certainly fills in the pages of history. It could bring depth to any unit on black history or civil rights, demanding research into terms such as sharecropping, carpet baggers, Uncle Tomming and night riders. Yet, I think this novel is more appropriately graded for upper middle school, and even in that context, it will likely produce controversy and perhaps attempts at censorship. Taylor frequently refers to corporal punishment with Papa’s “wide leather strap,” she uses the expletive “n.....” repeatedly, she explains the slave practice of breeding stock, and she fills the story with instances of violence and death including attacks on children. More subtle are the messages about traditional gender roles and personal retaliation. 

     Taylor is not dishonest though in her portrayal of rural Mississippi culture in 1933, and I believe that all of us need an accurate rendering of what black men, women and children endured for so many decades. In such an account, racial slurs and acts of violence cannot be whitewashed. Instead their brutality must be realized if not vicariously and painfully experienced so that we might not repeat them. As readers, we can then endure those hard lessons along with Cassie with greater confidence in our capacity to create positive change in a more enlightened culture. For Taylor pointedly reminds us that equality is a dream not yet realized. In the height of the novel’s climax, Papa explains, “This thing’s been coming a long time, baby, and T.J. just happened to be the one foolish enough to trigger it” (Taylor, 2016/1976, p. 259). Papa’s words reminded me of the ongoing eruption of racial violence throughout modern American history: the Watts riots of 1965, Newark in 1967, protests following the assassinations of MLK and Robert Kennedy, the 1992 Rodney King riots, the unrest in Ferguson in 2014, and last year, the protests in Charlottesville, Virginia. Even today, there are social and institutional forces that limit economic freedom and racial equality, just as there were when Taylor wrote in 1976. So like Cassie’s Mama, in the same hope for a better future for our children, we bear the obligation to share truth, the truth that is not explicit in the dates and definitions of history textbooks. Roll My Thunder, Hear My Cry gives us a resource, a beautiful and poignant tale, to illuminate the injustices of the past and to shine the way toward a better future.

King Jr., M.L. (2000). Why we can't wait. New York, NY: Signet Classics.
Taylor, M.D. (2016). Roll of thunder, hear my cry. New York, NY: Puffin Books. (Original work published 1976)