Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is a novel by Mildred D. Taylor that won the Newbery Medal in 1977. It is part of her Logan family series and a sequel to the 1975 novella Song of the Trees.

The Logans own their land, which distinguishes them from most Black families around them who sharecropped. It originally belonged to a white plantation owner, Harlan Granger, who sold it during Reconstruction to cover his taxes, and that history is the reason the family's independence is tied to property. Cassie's father works away on the railroad and her mother teaches at the local school, both arrangements that carry risk in the setting the book describes.

Rather than a single overarching storyline, the novel is made of several interwoven plots that accumulate across one year, and the subjects it works with include Jim Crow segregation, Black landownership, sharecropping, the Great Depression and lynching. Cassie's narration keeps the reader at the level of a child who is only gradually understanding what the adults around her already know, which is why the book is read both as a family story and as a historical account of the period.