Home Vignette

Jasmine Arias

Period 6

Imagine you had to go to a school where everybody hated you and there were only eight more people who were the same ethnicity as you? Would you rather stay there or go to a different school? Where you were low class and got all the used and torn books from all the white kids. In the books Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor and Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Patillo Beals they have a whole story of children and racism. Melba Beals talks about herself as a teenager going to an integrated white school called Central High. Mildred Taylor talks about a girl named Cassie and her family struggling to go to school with all the racism going on.

In Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Cassie and her brothers and sisters have trouble walking to school. While they were walking to school, Cassie's brother Little Man saw that the white kids had a school bus, and they didn't. "Well, where's our bus?" demanded Little Man (page 9). This quote represents some racism because of their color, the white students had a bus to school and all the black people had to walk to school. In Warriors Don't Cry, Melba has a normal life as a black citizen with the same problems of racism but in her case, better. When she had left to her aunt's house, and she came back, she had been chosen to go to school with the white kids and with eight other ids from where she went. After a little while in school, both started to have trouble in school.

Melba from Warriors Don't Cry started integrating to Central High school. When Melba got out of the car to go inside the school and everybody was calling her names and telling her to leave. "Niggers, go home! Niggers go back where you belong!" (Page 35). This is the part where Melba and her mom get out of the car across the street up Central High and they were being crowded. In Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Cassie and her brothers have to walk to school but everyday when they are walking, the white kid's school bus always splashes them with water and dirt. They have to go through that everyday. Little Man (Cassie's brother) doesn't appreciate how the condition of their equipment in school is.

In Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry Cassie defends her brother from the teacher yelling at him. Little Man hated that the new books they got were torn and written on because of the white students. In the front of the book it said that they gave the books to black people. "Yes'm, he can. He been reading since he was four. He can't read all them big words, but he can read them columns, see what's in the last row. Please look, Miz Crocker." Cassie is defending her little brother regarding the books. The book said nigger and Miz Crocker looked at it and said "that's what you are." In Melba's situation, instead of people calling her nigger by books, they tell it to her face. Melba didn't go to school for reasons like that for a while. Later, there were many other fights going on.

Other than Melba having trouble and people trying to fight her, there was also something going on in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. "Sometimes a person's got to fight," he said slowly. "But at that store ain't the place to be doing it. Folks like them Wallaces got no respect at all for colored folks and they just think it's funny when we fight each other." (page 87). Mr.