Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor is a very powerful

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Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor is a very powerful novel about the Logan family living in Mississippi in the 1930's. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor is a very powerful novel about the Logan family living in Mississippi in the 1930's. The story is told through the eyes of nine-year-old Cassie Logan, who has to learn throughout the entire book, how harsh the world truly is for blacks. Cassie has to learn that it is a white man's world out there, and that black people don't have much of a say in what goes on in it. There are many events in this book which lead me to say how prejudiced our country was at that time. One thing that stays on my mind is the conflict between Cassie and Lillian Jean, a white girl about the same age as Cassie. During Cassie's first visit to the town of Strawberry, she accidentally bumps into Lillian Jean. It is then that Lillian Jean starts calling Cassie names (comparing Cassie's "nasty little self" with "decent white folk"), and makes her apologize. Big Ma and Charlie Simms, Lillian Jean's father, force Cassie to do so, and Cassie is also told to call her, "Miz" Lillian Jean. Cassie does not understand why this must be so, and the idea of calling someone "Miz", who is the same age as herself, hits Cassie hard. She takes her revenge by beating Lillian Jean up, and also blackmailing her. It is the first time that Cassie realizes that white and black children are treated differently. It shows how black children are forced to feel inferior to white children. Another cause of racism is where the whites hate the Logan family for owning their own land. Throughout the book, there are many efforts from the white people- mainly, Mr. Granger- to get... ... middle of paper ... ...is saved for the moment, though because of the fact that he is black, it is unlikely that T.J. will be saved. This situation just goes to show that the idea that all men are created equal in the U.S., does not apply to the blacks in Roll of Thunder. I can see from Mildred D. Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, that racism affected the black people in the Deep South, years after slavery was abolished. Everywhere you turn, you can see that this issue was a daily part of their lives. The law turned a blind eye to crimes committed against blacks. The education system for blacks was second-rate. Black children were separated from whites from the beginning, thus making the blacks hate whites, as they grew older. Whites did not want blacks to feel in any way equal to them. And from the book, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, I can better understand this issue.

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