Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry is the Newbery Medal-winning first installment. Readers become acquainted with the main characters: protagonist Cassie, her three brothers and their mischievous friends, Mama – a school teacher, and Papa – an itenerant worker who is often away from home. Taylor paints a picture of segregation's inequalities from the first chapter. Readers feel the humiliation of the Logans as a bus full of white children splatters Cassie and siblings with mud the first day of school. The intensity of race relations culminates in a family friend – a Black youth's trial for murder of a white man.
