Home Vignette
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 Dont 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, Cassies brother Little Man saw that the white kids had a school bus, and they didnt. “Well, wheres 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 Dont 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 aunts 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 Dont 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!” (
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. “Yesm, he can. He been reading since he was four. He cant read all them big words, but he can read them columns, see whats 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 “thats what you are.” In Melbas situation, instead of people calling her nigger by books, they tell it to her face. Melba didnt 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 persons got to fight,” he said slowly. “But at that store aint the place to be doing it. Folks like them Wallaces got no respect at all for colored folks and they just think its funny when we fight each other.” (page 87). Mr.