The novel was adapted into a television miniseries in 1978.įour of Taylor’s subsequent books featuring the Logan family earned the Coretta Scott King Book Award: Let the Circle Be Unbroken (1981), The Friendship (1987), The Road to Memphis (1990), and The Land (2001). Taylor continued their story in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, which won the Newbery Medal in 1977 and was a finalist for the National Book Award. The book Song of the Trees (1975) introduced the Logans-a loving, strong, African American family living in Mississippi during the Great Depression. Taylor was first published after winning a contest sponsored by the Council on Interracial Books for Children. While attempting to establish a writing career, she worked as a study-skills coordinator in a black education program that she helped design. After working with the Peace Corps in Ethiopia, Taylor studied at the University of Colorado, earning a master’s degree in journalism. She received a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Toledo in 1965. Taylor vowed to find a way to present a richer portrait of African American life. These accounts of people who kept their dignity and spirit in the face of slavery and other injustices contrasted with the limited, often bland, information about African American history presented in her textbooks. She grew up hearing her father and other family members tell stories about ancestors.
Mildred Delois Taylor was born on September 13, 1943, in Jackson, Mississippi, but her family moved to Toledo, Ohio, when she was three months old. Taylor wrote several books about the Logan family.
She is best known for Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1976), a tale of Cassie Logan-a girl growing up in rural Mississippi in the 1930s-as she and her family struggle for courage in the face of racism. Taylor wrote books of historical fiction for children that offer realistic portraits of black families in the mid-1900s. Drawing upon her own experiences and those of family members, American author Mildred D.
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