Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
By: Mildred D. Taylor
Multicultural

This book is told from the point of view from a young girl named Cassie Logan during the Depression of the 1930's. Cassie lives with her mother (Mary), father (David) and her three brothers (Stacey, Little Man and Christopher John). This book is about how the Logan family is struggling to try and keep the small area of land they own, which a man named Harlan Granger is trying to buy. The story starts out with the children walking down a dirt road on the way to their first day of school; Cassie wearing her Sunday dress. The blacks during this time struggle to make it through life because of the segregation and racism. Unusually, the Logan children have a white friend named Jeremy who walks with them to school. The Logan family finds out that a black man named Berry dies from being burned by a white man in their town and the black community becomes furious when the crime goes unpunished. Angry that the school bus that the white children ride always drives by covering them in dust and mud, they decide to dig holes in the road to make the bus get stuck. Even after their father warns them not to go to the Wallace store, Stacey, his friend T.J. and the other children go there after school to fight. When they get home they find out that Harlan has been talked to Big Ma (their grandmother who owns the land), about buying it. When Stacey admits they went to the Wallace store, his mother takes him to see a man who survived being burned by the Wallaces. Knowing that they are the ones who burned Mr. Berry, Ma urges people to boycott the store. When they go to the town of Strawberry, Big Ma makes Cassie apologize to a girl named Lillian Jean that she accidentally bumped into, but after acting like her slave for a while Cassie ends up beating her up. The children stop being friends with T.J when their mother gets fired because they found out he told Kaleb Wallace she wasn't teaching what she was supposed to. When Stacey and L.T (a man who works on the farm) go to Vicksburg, they are attacked and Papa's leg gets run over by the wagon. Injured, Papa has to borrow money from their Uncle Hammer to pay for the loan. When T.J. shows up to the Logan's house injured, a mob arrives to beat him and his family because they are being held responsible for a robbery that two white boys did. Papa starts a fire on their land to distract the mob, which ultimately brings together everyone when they try to put it out.

I think this book would be most appropriate for 5th grade AIG students or higher grades. I believe this because some of the language may be difficult to read and some parts of the book can be confusing. There are several activities that could be used in the classroom with this book. For one, you could have your students think about what it must feel like to live during this time as a black. Ask them to write a story about how it would make them feel and what they may do to try to change the way they would be treated. Ask students to think about how our world has changed since we have become a "melting pot." Encourage them to discuss how these changes have made the world a better place and an easier environment for everyone to live in. You could also ask your students to find someone different from them (race, gender, sexual orientation) and then have them talk with their partner about the challenges they face because of this difference.