Key academic vocabulary regarding the setting of Mildred Taylor's novel

1. Roll of Thunder,
Hear My Cry
Key Concepts

2. Emancipation Proclamation
Issued by President Lincoln on January 1, 1863
during the American Civil War . It freed 3.1
million of the nation’s 4 million slaves.

3. The Fifteenth Amendment
February 3, 1870
Prohibits each state in the United States from
denying a citizen the right to vote on that
citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of
servitude" (i.e., slavery).

4. The Great Depression
1929 - 1939
During the 1930s much of the world faced harsh
economic conditions. In the United States, 1 out
of 4 people was out of work. Many were
homeless. Many hungry people stood in long
food lines to receive free food.

5. What is a Sharecropper?
A person who works fields rented from a
landowner. The sharecropper repays loans
for shelter, land, seed, and fertilizer by
turning over about 50% of the crops they
raised to the landowner.

6. What is a Mortgage?
An agreement by which someone borrows
money from a bank to buy land or a home.
The bank has the right to take possession of
property if the loan is not repaid on time.

7. What is Prejudice?
pre=before ; judice=to judge
• To judge a person before knowing them
• A preformed opinion, usually an unfavorable
one, based on insufficient knowledge, irrational
feelings, or inaccurate stereotypes

8. What is Segregation?
The practice of keeping ethnic, racial,
religious, or gender groups separate by
enforcing the use of separate schools,
transportation, housing and other
facilities.

9. de jure segregation
segregation enforced by law
Ex: separate schools and water fountains

10. de facto segregation
• segregation that does not involve the
law
• how groups are actually segregated in a
particular place or society

11. “Separate but Equal”
• In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy vs. Ferguson that
segregation was acceptable under the Constitution so long
as the races were provided equal conditions.
• In 1954 the Supreme Court reversed this decision in Brown v.
Board of Education ending segregation in public schools.

12. Jim Crow Laws (1876-1965)
• In the 1880’s racial segregation became legal in many Southern states.
The “Jim Crow” laws required the separation of African-Americans from
whites in public places such as restaurants, trains, buses, and schools, as
well as many others.
• The supporters claimed that African-Americans could use “separate
but equal” facilities