by Austin Vail

Created on: February 11, 2007   Last Updated: May 08, 2007

The Road to Memphis

Mildred D. Taylor

Puffin, 1992, reissue edition

ISBN-10: 0140360778

ISBN-13: 978-0140360776

Black American Literature

Cassie Logan is a teenaged Black woman growing up in the segregated South of 1941. She tells this story from her point of view, a story shot full of danger as she, her older brother Stacey and his friends drive in Stacey's nice car from Jackson, Mississippi to Memphis, Tennessee in order to save Moe Turner from the harsh justice meted out to Black people who attack White people.

Racial tension is a fact of life as the two groups attempt to keep away from each other. Taylor writes this tension in a way that allows for a certain amount of stereotyping of White people, being that Cassie is in her teens and sees the world in less sophisticated ways than adults would. However, she is also the target of racism, and this naturally leads to a deep suspicion of all White people.

The attack on a White is provoked, a situation that cannot be avoided as Blacks and Whites intermingle more during a time that the country becomes more urban and World War II develops. Segregation is already becoming an unworkable system in a rapidly changing world. The social boundaries in the rural South work because large distances separate Whites from Blacks, and when conflict happens, the ways to avoid a bad situation from becoming terrible are familiar. Taylor shows that the advantage of distance goes away in the city. Mere blocks separate the races, and the population in general is packed closer together.

A subplot involves Cassie's first serious infatuation with an older man, Solomon Bradley, a successful newspaper publisher in Memphis. Solomon handles the romance kindly and does fall into Cassie's charms, lending elements of sensuality into a story that is otherwise a series of bad situations becoming worse, a classic structure.

Taylor balances the strengths of the family with the relationships among friends, both White and Black. She includes a White friend of the family who has serious internal conflicts with his own culture, Jeremy Simms, and a mature White lawyer ally, Wade Jamison. Sometimes the kindness of strangers helps Cassie, her brothers and their friends to reach Memphis. Although some Whites are serious bigots, others treat people the same no matter what, following the principle of do unto others as you would like them to do unto you.

Emotions run high along the dangerous road to Memphis. This is a story about a journey of friends and family as well as the movement of a nation into war and the civil rights issues that will follow.

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