Roll Of Thunder Symbolism

Throughout American history, African Americans faced the cruel and harsh reality of slavery and racism. In the American South in the 1930s, African Americans were discriminated against and seen as inferior to whites. This racism, discrimination and segregation is a social norm in the American South in Mildred D. Taylor’s novel, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. Taylor uses the symbolism of certain vehicles, a fig tree and the Logan land to depict the severity of racism and the condition of southern society in the 1930s.
Taylor uses the symbolism of vehicles such as the school bus and Packards to show the supposed superiority of the whites in the 1930s. The bus symbolizes power and dominance for white children. When schools were segregated in the

Many of the black families in Spokane County shopped at the Wallace Store that was owned by the whites. Papa and Mama, Cassie’s parents, we're trying to get the blacks to shop in a store in a nearby town called Vicksburg, because the Wallaces caused a lot of trouble for the blacks. When Mr. Avery and Mr. Lanier, two sharecroppers on Mr. Granger’s land, come to talk to Papa to discuss shopping at Vicksburg, they tell Papa that the Wallaces were threatening them and that Mr. Granger started to take sixty percent of their earnings instead of fifty percent. Because of this, Lanier and Avery give up on trying to shop at Vicksburg. When Stacey hears this, he gets mad and starts to argue about how it is unfair that Avery and Lanier are backing out of the plan. Papa tells Stacey that they are lucky to have all of their land and that other black families wish that they could have so much. Cassie then asks Papa if they are giving up too. Papa points to a fig tree and tells Cassie that all of the other trees around it, like the oak and walnut, will get bigger and overshadow the little fig. Papa tells Cassie that the fig tree has “roots that run deep” (Taylor 206) and that it belongs in the yard just like the other trees. To answer her question, Papa tells Cassie that “[the fig tree] keeps on growing and doing what it gotta do. It don't give up. It give up, it'll die (Taylor 206). Just like the fig tree, the Logan family has roots in the south because the Logans were in Spokane County before the Civil War. Even though they are black, the Logans have every right to be in the south and own land, and because Papa’s father rightfully bought the land from a northerner after Reconstruction, they don't have to give it up to anyone, black or white. Just as Papa says, the fig tree, or in this case the Logan family, cannot give up. They have to keep fighting for freedom and equality because if they don't, they won't ever be