Evelyn Powell
Mr. Horn
Ela 5th period
2/13/23
How do the Logan’s use family and community to help them survive? In the book “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry”, written by Mildred D. Taylor, you follow a family of 7 named the Logans, the Logan family lived in southern USA, during the peak of racism and Jim Crow laws, the family was better off than many other African American families at that time, they had their own land and could afford decent food, but they still weren’t extremely well off. Their family had a countable amount of debt and could only buy new clothes in turns, but they could handle their own, one of the main contributors to this relatively stable life was their family and community. When times were tough, they would work together with friends and family, white and black, to help each other, they would lend money, they could give people food
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One example of this mutual aid is when their richer uncle from up north lends them some money to make sure they do not lose the land, as shown here, “‘borrowed some of it, sold a few things,’ he said with a shrug… ‘papa,’ I said ‘Uncle Hammer sold the Packard.’… ‘What good’s a car? It can’t grow cotton. You can’t build a home on it. And you can’t raise four fine babies in it.’”. This is important because it shows us not only a time when the Logans received help from their family and extended community, it also displays the mutual loss and gain of these types of exchanges, the Logans were allowed to keep their land, but Uncle Hammer lost his car, however due to the mutual companionship both parties share and how important the land was to both of them, it was a net positive. But this mutual exchange doesn’t only exist in one family, it also happens between entire communities, such as when the Logan family’s cotton field caught on fire and people came to help. This is shown in these lines “‘you mean you