Raves for ROLL OF THUNDER, HEAR MY CRY
“The vivid story of a black family whose warm ties to each other and their land give them the strength to defy rural Southern racism during the Depression, this [novel] grows with convincing detail of character and situation, punctuated by tension-building incidents…. Entirely through its own internal development, the novel shows the rich inner rewards of black pride, love, and independence.”
—Booklist, starred review
“The events and setting of this powerful novel are presented with such verisimilitude and the characters are so carefully drawn that one might assume the book to be autobiographical, if the author were not so young.”
—The Horn Book
“The strong, clear-headed Logan family…are drawn with quiet affection and their actions tempered with a keen sense of human fallibility.”
—Kirkus Reviews, pointer review
WINNER OF THE NEWBERY MEDAL
A NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
BOOKS BY MILDRED D. TAYLOR
The Friendship
The Gold Cadillac
The Land
Let the Circle Be Unbroken
Mississippi Bridge
The Road to Memphis
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Song of the Trees
The Well
ROLL OF THUNDER,
HEAR MY CRY
MILDRED D. TAYLOR
FRONTISPIECE BY JERRY PINKNEY
PUFFIN BOOKS
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by Penguin Group
Penguin Young Readers Group,
345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road,
Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand
First published in the United States of America by Dial Books, 1976
Published by Puffin Books, 1991
This Puffin Modern Classics edition published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2004
Copyright © Mildred D. Taylor, 1976
Frontispiece copyright © Dial Books
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 91-53031
ISBN: 978-1-101-65794-2
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
To the memory of my beloved father, who lived many adventures of the boy Stacey and who was in essence the man David
Author’s Note
My father was a master storyteller. He could tell a fine old story that made me hold my sides with rolling laughter and sent happy tears down my cheeks, or a story of stark reality that made me shiver and be grateful for my own warm, secure surroundings. He could tell stories of beauty and grace, stories of gentle dreams, and paint them as vividly as any picture with splashes of character and dialogue. His memory detailed every event of ten or forty years or more before, just as if it had happened yesterday.
By the fireside in our northern home or in the South where I was born, I learned a history not then written in books but one passed from generation to generation on the steps of moonlit porches and beside dying fires in one-room houses, a history of great-grandparents and of slavery and of the days following slavery; of those who lived still not free, yet who would not let their spirits be enslaved. From my father the storyteller I learned to respect the past, to respect my own heritage and myself. From my father the man I learned even more, for he was endowed with a special grace that made him tower above other men. He was warm and steadfast, a man whose principles would not bend, and he had within him a rare strength that sustained not only my sister and me and all the family, but all those who sought his advice and leaned upon his wisdom.
He was a complex person, yet he taught me many simple things, things important for a child to know: how to ride a horse and how to skate; how to blow soap bubbles and how to tie a kite knot that met the challenge of the March winds; how to bathe a huge faithful mongrel dog named Tiny. In time, he taught me the complex things too. He taught me of myself, of life. He taught me of hopes and dreams. And he taught me the love of words. Without his teachings, without his words, my words would not have been.
My father died last week. The stories as only he could tell them died with him. But his voice of joy and laughter, his enduring strength, his principles and constant wisdom remain, a part of all those who knew and loved him well. They remain also within the pages of this book, its guiding spirit and total power.
Mildred D. Taylor
April 1976
Table of Contens
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1
“Little Man, would you come on? You keep it up and you’re gonna make us late.”
My youngest brother paid no attention to me. Grasping more firmly his newspaper-wrapped notebook and his tin-can lunch of cornbread and oil sausages, he continued to concentrate on the dusty road. He lagged several feet behind my other brothers, Stacey and Christopher-John, and me, attempting to keep the rusty Mississippi dust from swelling with each step and drifting back upon his shiny black shoes and the cuffs of his corduroy pants by lifting each foot high before setting it gently down again. Always meticulously neat, six-year-old Little Man never allowed dirt or tears or stains to mar anything he owned. Today was no exception.
“You keep it up and make us late for school, Mama’s gonna wear you out,” I threatened, pulling with exasperation at the high collar of the Sunday dress Mama had made me wear for the first day of school—as if that event were something special. It seemed to me that showing up at school at all on a bright August-like October morning made for running the cool forest trails and wading barefoot in the forest pond was concession enough; Sunday clothing was asking too much. Christopher-John and Stacey were not too pleased about the clothing or school either. Only Little Man, just beginning his school career, found the prospects of both intriguing.
“Y’all go ahead and get dirty if y’all wanna,” he replied without even looking up from his studied steps. “Me, I’m gonna stay clean.”
“I betcha Mama’s gonna ‘clean’ you, you keep it up,” I grumbled.
“Ah, Cassie, leave him be,” Stacey admonished, frowning and kicking testily at the road.
“I ain’t said nothing but—”
Stacey cut me a wicked look and I grew silent. His disposition had been irritatingly sour lately. If I hadn’t known the cause of it, I could have forgotten very easily that he was, at twelve, bigger than I, and that I had promised Mama to arrive at school looking clean and ladylike. “Shoot,” I mumbled finally, unable to restrain myself from further comment, “it ain’t my fault you gotta be in Mama’s class this year.”
Stacey’s frown deepened and he jammed his fists into his pockets, but said nothing.
Christopher-John, walking between Stacey and me, glanced uneasily at both of us but did not interfere. A short, round boy of seven, he took little interest in troublesome things, preferring to remain on good terms wit
h everyone. Yet he was always sensitive to others and now, shifting the handle of his lunch can from his right hand to his right wrist and his smudged notebook from his left hand to his left armpit, he stuffed his free hands into his pockets and attempted to make his face as moody as Stacey’s and as cranky as mine. But after a few moments he seemed to forget that he was supposed to be grouchy and began whistling cheerfully. There was little that could make Christopher-John unhappy for very long, not even the thought of school.
I tugged again at my collar and dragged my feet in the dust, allowing it to sift back onto my socks and shoes like gritty red snow. I hated the dress. And the shoes. There was little I could do in a dress, and as for shoes, they imprisoned freedom-loving feet accustomed to the feel of the warm earth.
“Cassie, stop that,” Stacey snapped as the dust billowed in swirling clouds around my feet. I looked up sharply, ready to protest. Christopher-John’s whistling increased to a raucous, nervous shrill, and grudgingly I let the matter drop and trudged along in moody silence, my brothers growing as pensively quiet as I.
Before us the narrow, sun-splotched road wound like a lazy red serpent dividing the high forest bank of quiet, old trees on the left from the cotton field, forested by giant green-and-purple stalks, on the right. A barbed-wire fence ran the length of the deep field, stretching eastward for over a quarter of a mile until it met the sloping green pasture that signaled the end of our family’s four hundred acres. An ancient oak tree on the slope, visible even now, was the official dividing mark between Logan land and the beginning of a dense forest. Beyond the protective fencing of the forest, vast farming fields, worked by a multitude of sharecropping families, covered two thirds of a ten-square-mile plantation. That was Harlan Granger land.
Once our land had been Granger land too, but the Grangers had sold it during Reconstruction to a Yankee for tax money. In 1887, when the land was up for sell again, Grandpa had bought two hundred acres of it, and in 1918, after the first two hundred acres had been paid off, he had bought another two hundred. It was good rich land, much of it still virgin forest, and there was no debt on half of it. But there was a mortgage on the two hundred acres bought in 1918 and there were taxes on the full four hundred, and for the past three years there had not been enough money from the cotton to pay both and live on too.
That was why Papa had gone to work on the railroad.
In 1930 the price of cotton dropped. And so, in the spring of 1931, Papa set out looking for work, going as far north as Memphis and as far south as the Delta country. He had gone west too, into Louisiana. It was there he found work laying track for the railroad. He worked the remainder of the year away from us, not returning until the deep winter when the ground was cold and barren. The following spring after the planting was finished, he did the same. Now it was 1933, and Papa was again in Louisiana laying track.
I asked him once why he had to go away, why the land was so important. He took my hand and said in his quiet way: “Look out there, Cassie girl. All that belongs to you. You ain’t never had to live on nobody’s place but your own and long as I live and the family survives, you’ll never have to. That’s important. You may not understand that now, but one day you will. Then you’ll see.”
I looked at Papa strangely when he said that, for I knew that all the land did not belong to me. Some of it belonged to Stacey, Christopher-John, and Little Man, not to mention the part that belonged to Big Ma, Mama, and Uncle Hammer, Papa’s older brother who lived in Chicago. But Papa never divided the land in his mind; it was simply Logan land. For it he would work the long, hot summer pounding steel; Mama would teach and run the farm; Big Ma, in her sixties, would work like a woman of twenty in the fields and keep the house; and the boys and I would wear threadbare clothing washed to dishwater color; but always, the taxes and the mortgage would be paid. Papa said that one day I would understand.
I wondered.
When the fields ended and the Granger forest fanned both sides of the road with long overhanging branches, a tall, emaciated-looking boy popped suddenly from a forest trail and swung a thin arm around Stacey. It was T.J. Avery. His younger brother Claude emerged a moment later, smiling weakly as if it pained him to do so. Neither boy had on shoes, and their Sunday clothing, patched and worn, hung loosely upon their frail frames. The Avery family sharecropped on Granger land.
“Well,” said T.J., jauntily swinging into step with Stacey, “here we go again startin’ another school year.”
“Yeah,” sighed Stacey.
“Ah, man, don’t look so down,” T.J. said cheerfully. “Your mama’s really one great teacher. I should know.” He certainly should. He had failed Mama’s class last year and was now returning for a second try.
“Shoot! You can say that,” exclaimed Stacey. “You don’t have to spend all day in a classroom with your mama.”
“Look on the bright side,” said T.J. “Jus’ think of the advantage you’ve got. You’ll be learnin’ all sorts of stuff ’fore the rest of us….” He smiled slyly. “Like what’s on all them tests.”
Stacey thrust T.J.’s arm from his shoulders. “If that’s what you think, you don’t know Mama.”
“Ain’t no need gettin’ mad,” T.J. replied undaunted. “Jus’ an idea.” He was quiet for a moment, then announced, “I betcha I could give y’all an earful ’bout that burnin’ last night.”
“Burning? What burning?” asked Stacey.
“Man, don’t y’all know nothin’? The Berrys’ burnin’. I thought y’all’s grandmother went over there last night to see ’bout ’em.”
Of course we knew that Big Ma had gone to a sick house last night. She was good at medicines and people often called her instead of a doctor when they were sick. But we didn’t know anything about any burnings, and I certainly didn’t know anything about any Berrys either.
“What Berrys he talking ’bout, Stacey?” I asked. “I don’t know no Berrys.”
“They live way over on the other side of Smellings Creek. They come up to church sometimes,” said Stacey absently. Then he turned back to T.J. “Mr. Lanier come by real late and got Big Ma. Said Mr. Berry was low sick and needed her to help nurse him, but he ain’t said nothing ’bout no burning.”
“He’s low sick all right—’cause he got burnt near to death. Him and his two nephews. And you know who done it?”
“Who?” Stacey and I asked together.
“Well, since y’all don’t seem to know nothin’,” said T.J., in his usual sickening way of nursing a tidbit of information to death, “maybe I ought not tell y’all. It might hurt y’all’s little ears.”
“Ah, boy,” I said, “don’t start that mess again.” I didn’t like T.J. very much and his stalling around didn’t help.
“Come on, T.J.,” said Stacey, “out with it.”
“Well…” T.J. murmured, then grew silent as if considering whether or not he should talk.
We reached the first of two crossroads and turned north; another mile and we would approach the second crossroads and turn east again.
Finally T.J. said, “Okay. See, them Berrys’ burnin’ wasn’t no accident. Some white men took a match to ’em.”
“Y-you mean just lit ’em up like a piece of wood?” stammered Christopher-John, his eyes growing big with disbelief.
“But why?” asked Stacey.
T.J. shrugged. “Don’t know why. Jus’ know they done it, that’s all.”
“How you know?” I questioned suspiciously.
He smiled smugly. “ ’Cause your mama come down on her way to school and talked to my mama ’bout it.”
“She did?”
“Yeah, and you should’ve seen the way she look when she come outa that house.”
“How’d she look?” inquired Little Man, interested enough to glance up from the road for the first time.
T.J. looked around grimly and whispered, “Like…death.” He waited a moment for his words to be appropriately shocking, but the effect was spoiled by Little Man,
who asked lightly, “What does death look like?”
T.J. turned in annoyance. “Don’t he know nothin’?”
“Well, what does it look like?” Little Man demanded to know. He didn’t like T.J. either.
“Like my grandfather looked jus’ ’fore they buried him,” T.J. described all-knowingly.
“Oh,” replied Little Man, losing interest and concentrating on the road again.
“I tell ya, Stacey, man,” said T.J. morosely, shaking his head, “sometimes I jus’ don’t know ’bout that family of yours.”
Stacey pulled back, considering whether or not T.J.’s words were offensive, but T.J. immediately erased the question by continuing amiably. “Don’t get me wrong, Stacey. They some real swell kids, but that Cassie ’bout got me whipped this mornin’.”
“Good!” I said.
“Now how’d she do that?” Stacey laughed.
“You wouldn’t be laughin’ if it’d’ve happened to you. She up and told your mama ’bout me goin’ up to that Wallace store dancin’ room and Miz Logan told Mama.” He eyed me disdainfully then went on. “But don’t worry, I got out of it though. When Mama asked me ’bout it, I jus’ said ole Claude was always sneakin’ up there to get some of that free candy Mr. Kaleb give out sometimes and I had to go and get him ’cause I knowed good and well she didn’t want us up there. Boy, did he get it!” T.J. laughed. “Mama ’bout wore him out.”
I stared at quiet Claude. “You let him do that?” I exclaimed. But Claude only smiled in that sickly way of his and I knew that he had. He was more afraid of T.J. than of his mother.
Again Little Man glanced up and I could see his dislike for T.J. growing. Friendly Christopher-John glared at T.J., and putting his short arm around Claude’s shoulder said, “Come on, Claude, let’s go on ahead.” Then he and Claude hurried up the road, away from T.J.
Stacey, who generally overlooked T.J.’s underhanded stunts, shook his head. “That was dirty.”