Casey and his Mama

Cassie Logan

Cassie is the first-person narrator of the novel. At ten years old, she is the second oldest and the only female child in her family. Cassie is intelligent, outspoken, and self-confident, even when those qualities threaten to get her in trouble for speaking her mind in a white-dominated world. Over the course of the novel, Cassie directly experiences racism and learns the real dangers of being black in the South in the 1930s. At the beginning of the novel, Cassie is proud of herself and her race but unaware of the possible consequences of this pride. She is witness to the violence and injustice of the South as she becomes aware of lynchings, of the curtailment of her father and mother's freedom, and of the severe punishments meted out to blacks accused of wrongdoing. Cassie grows up over the course of the year, learns some sad truths, and experiences the strength and love of her family.

Mary "Mama" Logan

A thirty-three year old woman from the Delta, Mama went to high school in Jackson and was sent to the Crandon Teacher School by her tenant-farmer father. Her father died during her final year in teacher school, and she married Papa when she was nineteen. She has taught at the Great Faith school for fourteen years, and has four children of her own. Her strong pride in her race and her sense of justice lead her to paste over the inside covers of the schoolbooks, where the "very poor" condition of the book is listed next to the race of the black students. This outspokenness results in her being fired by the white school board. Though she tries to keep stories of the violence and injustice around them from her children, she ultimately cannot shield them from the,