`Roll Of Thunder, Hear My Cry' is set in the 1930s in the Southern state of Mississippi. During this time the United States of America was formed from number of states, each of which had its own laws about internal matters. Federal laws however were fixed by the President and Congress and applied to all states. In the period prior to the Civil War enormous differences had developed between the northern and southern states. The southern states relied heavily on agriculture, with crops such as cotton. The land was worked predominately by black slaves, who had originally been imported from Africa the seventeenth century. The North was more industrialised and its economy more city-based, with New York forming a major banking centre. Also in the 1930s America was hit by a serious economic depression, started by the Wall Street Crash in 1929. This hit the South very badly and...