Soon, Granger forces the Logans to pay up on a loan they once took out from the bank. Uncle Hammer has to sell his car in order to make the payment. Meanwhile, T. J. has become a rogue, a known thief, and he hangs out with two trouble-making White teenagers, . One day, they bring him along on a murderous rampage and manage to frame him. Papa and L. T. go to stop the lynching that follows. Almost as soon as they leave, however, the cotton field catches fire, as if it was struck by lightning. The lynch mob and the local black farmers must band together in order to stop the fire. It turns out that Papa started the fire in order to stop the lynching.
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is a coming of age story for Cassie, as she awakens to the true extent of racism in the South over the course of her tenth year. But at the same time, Cassie learns the importance of love, family, and self-respect. For Cassie, it is through personal humiliation of the incident in Strawberry that she must learn that life is not fair; through the pain of watching TJ's destruction that even the smallest offense by even the youngest black person can bring about irrevocable punishment; from her parents worries about losing the land that nothing is truly secure. Stacey, like Cassie, must learn through these same experiences, watching the violence visited upon both his father and TJ, that he as a black man will never be safe. But for both, these realizations are significant only in that they spark newly mature reactions of responsibility, love, and caring. To respond differently, foolishly, is to come of age like TJ -- to seek to be treated as a man while acting like a boy and thus earning the punishment of a man.
There is one lesson Cassie need not learn throughout Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry because it is already second nature to her. There is nothing more important than family. Cassie's shock when Jeremy says he doesn't like his older brothers demonstrates her firm belief and acceptance that family is more important than anything else. From Big Ma's stories about her husband and sons passed down to her granddaughter Cassie to Mr. Morrison's willingness to risk his life by staying to protect the Logans, after telling the story of the loss of his own family, it is clear that love of and devotion to family is the motivation that drives the majority of the characters in the book to act as they do, even if the things they do to protect or defend their family are racist or cruel, like the Wallaces or Charlie Simms. Those like TJ, who abandon their families ties, are lost. Those like Papa, who are willing to risk even death to protect their family, triumph.
Cassie Logan: Ten years old, Cassie is the first-person narrator of the novel. She is the second oldest and only girl in her family. Cassie is intelligent, outspoken, and self-confident, even when those qualities threaten to get her in trouble for speaking her mind in a white-dominated world or simply with her teacher at school. She spends most of her time with her three brothers, who are her confidants and playmates, and worships her father. Over the course of the novel, Cassie comes to experience racism directed at her and learns the real dangers of being black in the 1930s South. At the beginning of the novel, Cassie is outspoken, proud of herself and her race but unaware of the consequences of that outspokenness in her society. From various sources - her teacher, a prejudiced white girl and her cruel father, a prejudiced store owner - she experiences racism directly. She also is witness to the real violence and injustice of the South - becoming aware of lynchings, of white power's curtailment of her father and mother's freedoms, and of the severe punishments meted out to blacks accused of wrongdoing, even when they are fourteen-year-old friends of hers, like TJ. Cassie grows up over the course of the year, learning some sad truths and experiencing the strength and love of her family.
