Discrimination in Roll of Thunder

In this essay I will explain the subject of discrimination in the novel “Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry”. The novel was written by a woman called Mildred D. Taylor, she was born in Mississippi, where the book is set, but grew up in Ohio. She worked with university officials and students to secure a black studies course. Even though the novel was written in 1976, it is set in the times of the Great Depression of the USA, around the 1920’s. One example of discrimination is share cropping, this is when a land owner makes a person work free labour in exchange to stay on their land. In the following paragraphs I will write about 4 examples:

We first experience discrimination in the novel when we learn that Cassie and her siblings go to “Great Faith Elementary School”. Not long after we hear of the school we learn that it is a “black school”, from this we know that schools and other things are segregated in the Mississippi of the novel. Due to this segregation the richer white children feel superior toward the black folk. Furthermore, because of this feeling the white school (Jefferson Davis) bus religiously splashes the black children to and from school. We see this when Little Man says to Big Ma, “They splashed me again Big Ma!” This shows discrimination due to the fact that the white folk suffer no consequences to hurting the black folk, this shows that the black people had less rights than the white.

Another example of discrimination is when Lillian Jean Simms (a white child) commands Cassie to step off the side-walk. Cassie had just left a store owned by Mr Barnett after facing a confrontation with Mr Barnett himself. She had accidentally bumped into Lillian Jean and she didn’t take this lightly. Lillian Jean ordered Cassie to apologise and step off the side-walk into the road. Cassie refused to do either that was all until Big Ma returned from the lawyer. She forced Cassie to apologise. When Cassie did Lillian Jean told her to refer to her as “Miz”. This explains discrimination because it shows that white folk were more privileged than black folk, as it suggests that white people thought they needed to be respected in presence of black people.

Mr Morrison is a black workman on the rail roads and our next victim of discrimination. Mr Morrison was working on the rail roads when he was attacked by 2 white colleagues. He was attacked and fought back, due to this he was fired from his job. Cassie’s father had also  worked on the rail roads and found pity in Mr Morrison and invited him to stay at the Logan house. Even though Mr Morrison had been fired, this was not the only reason he was invited to the Logan house. There had been events of white men (the night men) killing black folks. Mr Morrison had gone to the house to protect the Logan family. These events both show discrimination in two ways. Firstly Mr Morrison being fired shows that white folk do face as severe consequences than black folk. Also the fact that the night men are famous for killing black folk and are not punished shows that white folk are not punished for thing that black folk are.

My final example of discrimination includes Cassie and her school for a second time. After Cassie had rejoined school after the holidays, they experienced a special assembly. In this assembly they had been told that for the first time ever they will get their own books. They were extremely excited but the excitement turned into anger when Cassie and Little Man saw what was on the front of the book. Before the pictures of white faces in the book, there was a chart recording the status of the book in previous years. The chart had stated: White-Pristine, White-Very good, White-Good, White-Bad and “Negro”-Terrible. When Little Man saw this he had immediately slammed the book on the floor and stated, “I DON’T WANT THIS!” He was punished and he didn’t get his own book. This event shows discrimination because it shows that black people were not as important as white folks in the 1930’s.

In this essay I have explained the theme of discrimination in the novel “Roll of thunder here my cry”. To conclude this essay I will state that discrimination in the book has the continuous theme of racism and that this is due to time of which the book is set