English Literature: Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry – Mildred Taylor

Background

Setting: Mississippi 1933

• USA comprises a number of states
• Each state has its own laws with reference to internal matters.
• Federal laws are fixed by congress and the president and apply to all states.
• Prior to the Civil War in 1861 there were huge differences between Northern and Southern states. The South was dependent upon agriculture – cotton, tobacco and rice grown on plantations (huge farms). The land was worked by black slaves originally shipped from Africa in the C17th. The North was industrialized – a city-based economy with New York as its major banking centre.
• Divisions between the North and South grew:
• the North was morally opposed to slavery
• Economic conflict
• North wanted to put customs duties on foreign goods. The South wanted free trade
• The South feared it would be defeated in Congress in 1860 – Abraham Lincoln was then president – and so formed the Confederate States of America in self-protection. It comprised several slave-keeping states including Mississippi.
• The result was Civil War of 1861. Its aims were:
• To restore unity
• To free all slaves
• The war continued until 1865 – it was bitter and divided families. Eventually the Southern Confederacy surrendered to the North.
• Between 1882 and 1903 over 2,000 blacks were lynched.

· From 1865 -77 A period called Reconstruction followed. Racial adjustment was forced upon the South. Slavery was ended and 4 million slaves were set free.

· White Southerners were up in arms. They deeply resented the end of slavery. They regarded blacks as inferior. This is explained by Mama in the text Ps 105-8.

· A consequence of this was the formation of the Klu Klux Klan in 1866 – a secret society dedicated to establishing white supremacy.

· Reconstruction was followed by a period of fear and intimidation of blacks in the South. Equality laws were rejected and reversed.

Appalling atrocities were committed: blacks were castrated, burnt alive, blinded, with hot pokers, decapitated – pregnant women and children amongst them. Groups of organised night men continued their reign of terror into the 1950s. In the book they slaughtered Mr Morrison’s family, referred to in Ch 7, Ps 121 -4.

Jim Crow ideology: Jim Crow was a derogatory name for a black person from the title of a C19th Black minstrel song. It means the systematic practice of discriminating against and the segregation of black people, especially as practised in the South of the US from the end of Reconstruction to the mid-C20th. Jim Crow Laws – upholding or practising discrimination against black people.