The Friendship (Logan Family Saga)

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Another powerful story in the Logan Family Saga and companion to Mildred D. Taylor s Newbery Award-winning Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.

Cassie Logan and her brothers have been warned never to go to the Wallace store. 

So they know to expect trouble there. What they don’t expect is to hear Mr. Tom Bee, an elderly black man, daring to call the white storekeeper by his first name. The year is 1933, the place is Mississippi, and any child knows that some things just aren’t done. Can a shared past between the two men make a difference?
 

"A powerful story…Readers will be haunted by its drama and emotion long after they have closed the book."—BooklistIt s hot and humid in 1933 Mississippi, when an elderly black man and a white store owner test their friendship against a backdrop of racism and peer pressure. An explosive confrontation takes place when the black man, Tom Bee, greets the clerk, John Wallace, by his first name--an intimacy unheard of at the time. A group of witnesses heckles Wallace for what they perceive as his permissiveness, and in spite of his private promise to Bee to allow him to greet him this way, Wallace betrays Bee, shooting him in the leg. This brief but poignant story won the 1988 Coretta Scott King Award. It provides strong characterization as well as food for discussion on racism and human relations.