Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry

Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry

An important idea in the novel "Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry" written by Mildred D Taylor is racism. This idea is important because it tells us how life was in the 1930s for a little black girl who matures with racial conflict around her.

"Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry" is about a young, black girl, Cassie Logan who tries to understand with her family, why the blacks are different to the whites. Cassie, the narrator leads us through all the disaster and trouble that her and her family have been through in relation with the white folks in Mississippi.

The first example that shows racial conflict between the blacks and whites is the Jefferson Davis School bus, which is full of white children. Blacks do not have a bus so Cassie and her brothers have to walk to school. However, each morning the children would be threatened by this bus, "a bus bore down on him spewing clouds of red dust like a huge yellow dragon breathing fire". This is surely because of racism. The whites in the bus seem to find it amusing with "laughing with faces" to see the black children run for their lives.

Another example is the incident Cassie takes a trip to Strawberry to the market. There she is made to apologize to Lillian Jean Simms (a white girl) for bumping into her. Cassie does not like to get pushed around and she stands up for herself. She says, "I ain't nasty, and if you're so afraid of getting bumped, walk down there yourself" to Lillian Jean after she is told to "get down in the road". This example tells us how the whites can tell the black people to do whatever they want them to do. In return, the black person would do what they are told but Cassie is strong and stubborn, and she refuses until her Big Ma tells her to apologize.

Overall, life in the 1930s for the black people was very difficult as they were pressured and pushed around as if they were animals.