Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1976

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary

On a hot October morning in 1933, narrator Cassie Logan walks to the first day of school with her 3 brothers. The Logan children wear dressy “Sunday clothing” as required by their mother, Mary, who teaches at their school. “Little Man,” the youngest sibling, worries that the dusty Mississippi road will soil his clothing. The children pass the edge of their family’s land. Cassie explains that a white man named Harlan Granger owns the rest of the nearby land. He rents it to sharecroppers, tenants who pay to farm the land. Cassie’s grandfather purchased 400 acres of land that once belonged to the Grangers, but now the Logans struggle to pay its mortgage and taxes. The Logans’ cotton crop earns less during the Great Depression. To earn extra money, Cassie’s father David spends part of the year away from home, working on the railroad. David believes in sacrificing to keep the land, but Cassie remains unconvinced.

T.J. Avery and his younger brother, Claude, approach the Logan children. T.J. mocks Stacey because Stacey’s mother, Mary, teaches his and Stacey’s class. T.J. implies that Stacey can obtain answers to Mary’s tests, which angers Stacey. T.J. tells the Logans that white men set fire to three Black men in the Berry family. He says that Big Ma, Cassie’s grandmother, helped treat the burned men. Cassie dislikes the way that T.J. teases out the story and how he treats Claude.

As the Logans near a crossroads, Stacey hurries them off the road and into the surrounding forest. A school bus full of white children barrels past, covering Little Man in red dust. Little Man angrily asks why his school does not have a bus. Stacey suggests that Little Man ask their mother.

Jeremy, a young white boy, approaches the Logans. Jeremy says that the white children have been in school since August. Cassie notes that Jeremy is a “strange boy” who “was often ridiculed by the other children at his school” (14). Though Jeremy has received beatings for speaking to Black children, he continues to spend time with the Logans. Jeremy’s sister, Lillian Jean, passes by and tells Jeremy to come with her. The Logans watch Jeremy and his sister reach the Jefferson Davis County School, named for the Civil War-era president of the Confederacy. Only white children attend Jefferson Davis. Cassie notes the two school buses parked by the school and sees the Mississippi flag, which incorporates part of the Confederate flag’s design.

The Logans arrive at The Great Faith Elementary and Secondary School where they attend classes with other Black students. Cassie says that “Most of the students were from families that sharecropped on Granger land,” so school only operates when the families finish planting and harvesting their cotton crops (16). Cassie observes the tattered state of her classmates’ dress clothes. She spots one student who walks for three and a half hours to reach the school. In her fourth-grade classroom, Cassie sits and thinks about the burning of the Berry family. Her teacher, Mrs. Crocker, scolds her for not paying attention.

Mrs. Crocker surprises the students by announcing that they will have reading textbooks. Cassie’s initial excitement about the books wanes when she sees their worn condition. Little Man, whose first-grade class temporarily shares a room with Cassie’s class, refuses to take the “dirty” book until Mrs. Crocker rebukes him. He grows angrier and stomps on the book when he sees a chart inside its cover. The chart shows that the books only came to Great Faith once their condition was “very poor” (25). When Cassie shows the chart to Mrs. Crocker in defense of Little Man, the teacher hits both Logan children with a switch.

Cassie walks to her mother’s classroom after school in hopes of telling Mary about the books and her punishment, but Mrs. Crocker arrives before Cassie. Cassie hides to eavesdrop on the women’s conversation. Mary listens to Mrs. Crocker describe Cassie and Little Man’s actions. She acknowledges their disobedience but does not criticize it. Instead, Mary begins pasting blank paper over the charts in the books. Mrs. Crocker warns her against altering county property, but Mary tells her that the students need “current books for all of our subjects, not just somebody’s old throwaways.” Cassie thinks how other teachers view Mary as a “disrupting maverick” (30). Cassie decides not to speak to her mother until they return home.

Chapter 2 Summary

Cassie, her mother, and her brothers pick cotton alongside Big Ma, Cassie’s paternal grandmother. Cassie sees her father, David, walking toward them with another man. The children happily greet their father and meet Mr. Morrison, his former co-worker. Mr. Morrison is an enormous size and has a scarred face. Mary and Big Ma approach and go with the children, David, and Mr. Morrison to the family’s home. Cassie describes the home’s living room, which also serves as her parents’ bedroom: “It was a warm, comfortable room of doors and wood and pictures” (35). The pictures reveal her father’s family history, showing Cassie’s grandfather, Big Ma, David, Cassie’s Uncle Hammer, and two deceased uncles.

David says that he must return to work on the railroad the next day. The children express their disappointment. David explains that he came home to bring Mr. Morrison, who will stay with the Logans as a hired hand. Mr. Morrison tells Mary that he lost his job with the railroad for fighting white men. Mary thanks him for his honesty and welcomes him to their home. Later that evening, Cassie asks Stacey why their father brought Mr. Morrison. She suspects David means for Mr. Morrison to protect the Logans because of the recent burning of the Berry family. Stacey avoids Cassie’s questions.

At church the next day, the Logans learn that John Henry Berry died of his burns. The children eavesdrop as a family friend speculates that Mr. Henry’s success angered white men. Another friend, Mrs. Lanier, implies that the white men accused and burned Mr. Henry for flirting with a white woman. Mrs. Lanier says that the white men chased Mr. Henry after he left a gas station. John Henry stopped at his uncle’s house to no avail: “But them men dragged him and Beacon both outa that house, and when old man Berry tried to stop it, they lit him afire with them boys” (40). In response to Mrs. Lanier’s story, David says that the Logans will no longer shop at the white-owned Wallace store. Cassie does not understand how the store and the story of the Berrys’s burning relate. David tells the children not to dance or drink at that store even though some of their friends do.

Chapter 3 Summary

In late October, wet weather begins. Mary gives the Logan children cumbersome dried calfskins to wear like raincoats on their walks to school, but they dislike the skins’ smell and try to avoid using them. The children also try to avoid splashes from the Jefferson Davis school bus. Little Man in particular continues to fret about the bus soiling his clothing. Cassie recalls Mary saying that the county pays for the white students’ buses, but barely funds the Black children’s school. Instead, Black churches provide resources for Great Faith. Big Ma encourages Little Man to focus on his education and stop worrying about “’them ignorant white folks’” (45).

The Logans and T.J. walk to school in a thunderstorm. They believe they hear the bus but see Harlan Granger drive by in his car, a Packard, instead (47). When the bus does come, it intentionally drives near the children. They fall into a gully as white children on the bus shout racist slurs and insults. Little Mans sobs. Stacey prevents T.J. from teasing Little Man and comforts his brother. When Jeremy approaches the children, they do not welcome him. Stacey tells his siblings to meet him at lunchtime. He has a plan to stop the bus from bothering them.

Under Stacey’s direction, the Logan children use their lunch hour to dig a trench in the road and fill it with water. When they return to the road after school, the trench has filled with more rainwater and grown enormous. The children hide in the woods. They see the bus tilt into the trench and become stuck. The irritated bus driver, Mr. Grimes, sends the white children to walk home in the rain. Many of them fall into the trench and emerge soaked. The Logan children relish their revenge and walk home through the woods.

Mary asks her children about the bus at dinner, but they feign ignorance. Mary confesses that she feels happy that the bus became stuck. Big Ma agrees, and the family laughs together. The children continue to giggle through their homework until T.J.’s father, Mr. Avery, knocks on the Logans’ door. He tells Mary that the white men who burned the Berry family may threaten Black families again that night. Mary sends the children to their rooms, but they try to eavesdrop on her conversation. Cassie hears Mr. Avery mention the bus driver and believes that the Logan children’s prank motivated the white men to retaliate. The children worry that the men will try to burn them. Stacey tries to calm his siblings and tells them to go to bed.

Cassie pretends to sleep. She sees Big Ma retrieve a rifle from under her bed. Big Ma guards Cassie’s room while Mary sits with the boys. Cassie eventually sleeps. She awakens hours later to find Big Ma gone. Cassie hears a sound on the porch and goes out to investigate. The family’s dog, Jason, jumps onto Cassie, startling her. Cassie feels relieved until she sees multiple headlights approaching the house. Cars pull into the driveway, and two white men emerge from them. The men appear confused about which house they have reached. They return to their cars and drive away. Cassie feels sick. Before she returns to bed, she sees Mr. Morrison patrolling the yard with a shotgun.

Chapters 1-3 Analysis

Cassie establishes the novel’s rural Mississippi setting through her narration. Poetic descriptions of the landscape convey its beauty as well as its potential for danger. The Logan children pass a “high forest bank of quiet, old trees” as they walk a road that divides the land like a “red serpent” (6). This juxtaposition of beauty and danger in the landscape echoes in the lives of Black residents of Cassie’s community. Cassie enjoys her surroundings by “running the cool forest trails and wading barefoot in the forest pond” (4). But Cassie’s surrounding community also threatens her and her loved ones. Cassie feels fear when white men who burned the Berry family approach the Logans’ home late at night. The novel’s setting inspires and threatens.

Historical context explains much of the danger in the novel’s setting. Cassie lives in the 1930’s, when Jim Crow laws applied in the United States. These laws enforced segregation, ensuring that Black people did not receive fair treatment in most aspects of life. The 1930’s also saw the United States in the grips of the Great Depression. The Logan family feels the impact of systemic racism and economic hardship. In its early chapters, the novel pays particular attention to an area where race and economic status have overlapping effects: education. Spokane, the county where Cassie lives, divides its paltry resources unequally among students. It issues out of date textbooks to white students until the books barely hold together, at which point it sends them to Black students. The county supplies school buses for the white students but not the Black students.

The Logans’ reactions to the educational inequality they observe reveal aspects of their personalities, characterizing them for readers. Cassie and Little Man, for instance, both rail against the injustice of receiving textbooks deemed unsuitable for white students. Their refusal to remain silent about that injustice even in the face of punishment suggests that both children possess courage and resolve. Stacey and Mary also show their willingness to engage in principled resistance to systemic racism. Mary covers up the textbook records while Stacey plots revenge against the school bus driver who targets his family. Accused of “biting the hand that feeds [her],” Mary tells her colleague “If that’s the case…I don’t think I need that little bit of food” (30).

By engaging with racism and poverty in its first chapters, the novel indicates a willingness to speak directly to young readers about difficult subjects. Cassie’s narration includes frightening details. She reports secondhand descriptions of the Berry men’s burning and describes her own reaction on the night that dangerous white men come to her family’s home. Cassie feels paralyzed by the sight of headlights “coming fast along the rain-soaked road like cat eyes in the night.” Her “legs would not move” and she “stopped breathing” until the men retreated (67). Cassie’s visceral fear speaks to the physical violence that racism provokes. The novel shows young readers that racist policies, bad enough on their own, can lead to endangered Black bodies. The violent stakes the author introduces in early chapters escalate as the novel progresses.