Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry Characters

Cassie is our go-to gal in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. We get the entire narrative from her perspective. She's only nine years old (in the fourth grade) and is living through some pretty rough ti...

Stacey is Cassie's big brother. He's twelve years old and in the seventh grade. He's not too excited about starting school this year, because his mom is his teacher. And even though we never get a...

T.J. Avery is Stacey's friend, even though the other Logan children can't quite figure out why. Tall and skinny, he comes from a poor sharecropping family. And he's bad news. A Very Flawed Characte...

Here's a nice descriptive touch about Mama: she smells like "sunshine and soap" (6.106). Okay, need more of a reason to care, other than that she's clean and hopeful? Mama is the mother (duh) of Ca...

Papa is away much of the time, because he has to work on the railroad to make extra money for the family. He works hard to care for his family, even if having to leave for work means he can't prote...

Papa brings Mr. Morrison to live with the Logans so the family can have some kind of protection while he is away working. He's described as: a "human tree [...] towering high above Papa's six feet...

Meet your arch-villain. Seriously, this guy is practically Disney-level evil. He Wants the LandGranger's family used to own the plantation land that many of the local families, like the Averys, now...

Christopher-JohnChristopher-John is the second-to-youngest Logan, and is seven years old. He's a "short, round boy" who wants to "remain on good terms with everyone" (1.10). He's sensitive to other...

Big Ma is the Logan children's grandmother, but she's not sitting around doing needlepoint portraits of her Chihuahuas. She's tall and strong, and her hands are big and rough from all her hard work...

Uncle Hammer is Papa's brother, and uncle to Cassie, Stacey, Little Man and Christopher-John. He comes off as a "city slicker" when compared to the other country folks: he lives in Chicago (the Big...

These brothers own the infamous Wallace store that sells alcohol to kids and hosts a dancing room for African-American teens (2.62). But they don't exactly do it out of the goodness of their hearts...

Don't hate Mr. Jamison just because he's an attorney. There's a lot more to him than that. In fact, Mr. Jamison is one of the few sympathetic white characters in the book. He rates so highly in Cas...

Mr. Barnett owns the Barnett Mercantile, the shop in Strawberry that the Logans visit and that T.J. and the Simms brothers rob. Mr. Barnett dies in the end from getting hit on the head by a Simms b...

Claude is T.J.'s little brother. He's about the same age as Little Man, and is friends with the Logans. He's described as skinny and frail, and "smile[s] weakly as if it pained him to do so" (1.20)...

Jeremy Simms is the one good apple in the otherwise rotten Simms barrel. He's a nice kid, blond-haired with eyes that are "whitewashed blue and […] seemed to weep when he spoke" (1.85). He makes...

Lillian Jean is Cassie's mean-girl antagonist. And Cassie may be biased as a narrator, but LJ doesn't sound too cute: she's "scrawny, chicken-legged, [and] snaggle-toothed" (6.80). Where Jeremy wou...

Charlie SimmsWe're not meant to like Charlie Simms: "He was a mean-looking man, red in the face and bearded" (5.98). Yep, that's bad news. He's so mean that he even pushes a black kid down in the r...

Little Willie WigginsHe's another seventh-grader at Great Faith Elementary and Secondary School, and a friend to the Logans. He's not around a lot, so he's pretty much a non-player character. Cassi...

Mr. Montier and Mr. HarrisonThese two white landowners never get any screen time, but other characters refer to them several times.Mr. Montier owns a lot of former plantation land in the area, and...