1. Racial inequality is a central theme in the novel. Research post-Civil War development of sharecropping and how it perpetuated racial inequality.

2. Research the Mississippi Delta region. What agriculture does the region support? How has agriculture changed over the last seventy years? Take a journey back in time and learn about sharecropping. What economic basis did it have? How did it happen? Summarize the lifestyle of a sharecropper family like that of the Jacksons.

3. Describe the life of a white teenage boy in the 1930s. Contrast it to the life of an African-American teenage boy. Now compare and contrast teenage life for white girls and African-American girls. Come up with some ideas about how these differences shaped American society.

4. Define the words honesty and integrity. Shortning had to make difficult choices to free his daddy from an injustice. Do you support...