In Kevin Boyle’s book “Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age” he tells the story through the eyes of a black doctor. This doctor was a proud African American who was a slave’s grandson that pushed his way into owning his own home in a white neighborhood in Detroit. Kevin Boyle centers his book around everything that is stated in the title. Arc of Justice is about African American’s struggles while trying to gain equal rights and justice in general during the 1920’s. The 1920’s was a time filled with a lot of racial tension and injustice to pretty much everyone who wasn’t a white male. The major argument that Boyle tries to get across is that no matter what improvements America thinks they’ve made, there will always be racial injustice towards African Americans that dates back to even before the 1920’s.
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I feel like it educated me a lot on the matter as well. Boyle does a great job at capturing all the aspects of the trials as well as the personal things in Dr. Sweet’s life. I appreciated how Boyle described all the good and bad parts of this controversial period in American history. Even though there are happy parts in the book like how Dr. Sweet won the trial he worked so hard to achieve, I didn’t particularly like how the end of the book ended so intensely. Dr. Sweet’s wife and child die due to sickness and he ultimately “went into his tiny bedroom, picked up a handgun, and put a bullet in his brain” 2. That is the last sentence of the book and although it is good that the author captured the full story of Dr. Sweet’s life, it’s takes away from the happy parts like winning the trial. Ultimately, I would recommend this book to anyone, especially people who have a special interest in American history or African American’s struggles to get where they are today. It was a great read and it was really informative as
The major role played by African American women in the reconstruction era is revised and illustrated in Tera W. Hunter’s To Joy my Freedom and Elsa Barkley Brown’s article Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom. Both documents analyze the participation and involvement of black women in social and political activities inside of their communities. To Joy my freedom, written by Tera W. Hunter provides an inner look into the lives and strives of African American women – mainly working class – living in Atlanta between the eighteenth and nineteenth century, in the middle of one of the most belligerent environments created in the era of Reconstruction.
The chapters begin with a backstory of the victim before going into detail about the event that took place, then concluding with how the court case went and the public's reaction. This is effective due to the fact that it automatically draws the reader in by sharing the devastating stories, while also representing the horrors of this time period without delay. Throughout the chapters, various organizations such as the NAACP and WPC are discussed in order to further portray the significance of the events and the impact these men and women had on society. By concluding each chapter with summarizations of the outcomes of the court cases and/or the public's reaction, Societies transformation is slowly represented because as the chapters go on, the jury votes more in favor of the African American victims. This gives the reader insight into how the different assaults and cases gradually changed society, gaining more and more support for the civil rights movements cause, representing how these women and men's stories greatly influenced the outcome of this
1. Explain the author's primary point. The author seeks to bring to light the unfair treatment of the Negros by the whites in the places they live in. He also seeks to show that leaders only make empty promises to their people. Brutal cases are most among the Negros as they are attacked and their cases go unnoticed or ignored.
He showed how black people were not seen as equals and how people reacted to a black person being in a white person’s territory. Both sources showed the challenge of being different. The challenge of what it’s like to live as a minority. How people can be cruel and condescending just by a person’s race and change is not easy to accept and achieve. Change is not something that can easily be accepted by everyone.
One of these flaws is equal rights. African Americans are having difficulties obtaining their own spot. “[Hansberry brings] local, individual struggles of African Americans—against segregation, ghettoization, and capitalist exploitation—to the national stage. (Gordon, 121 and 122)” The play first points out segregation.
He lets us in on the disturbing things like lynching, police calling them names, kicking them, and killing African Americans. About having to explain to sons and daughters why they can’t go to certain places they want to go or do things that they want to do. All this because of the color of their skin. “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?” He says by them realizing all these things they then can understand why they couldn’t wait any
The book, “Celia, A Slave,” is a true story written by Melton A. McLaurin and published by the University of Georgia Press in 1991. McLaurin was an educator at the University of South Alabama where he served several years as Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs before retiring. He is known for writing several articles and books about the American South and race relations. He wrote this book specifically about slavery and how women and men or blacks and whites were divided. Whites were superior in the United States.
The lecture on African Americans in the 1920s by Professor David Canton is very disturbing. His lecture was on the different unjust treatment that African Americans endured. The professor, to me, was trying to make the listener feel the anguish that African Americans did in the 1920s. In some sense he appeared passionate and at times angry about the treatment of African Americans. The government supported this hostile treatment because they believed African Americans were being subversive if they stood up and defended themselves.
Even though it’s nonfiction, it reads much like a fiction novel would, getting comparisons to ¬To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. What makes it even more compelling than the fictional novel is that these are the stories of real people, of those wrongly convicted or unfairly sentenced. Stevenson’s memoir truly shows the power of mercy and what it can do for those wronged by judiciaries. This book’s story of justice and redemption and Stevenson’s struggle to free convicts from unjust or excessive punishment is deeply moving and powerful. The reader will root for him as he struggles to do as much as he can for the accused.
In Ernest Gaines’ novel, A Lesson Before Dying, the author uses a third person point of view to assess the issue of racial injustice in the South during the 1940’s. Grant understands that justice is evaluated unfairly and knows that it does not favor the poor and uneducated black man. Due to Grant’s ability to be able to understand others, he successfully learns how to bring justice, while assisting Jefferson. This presents the audience the significance of the novel as a whole, embracing responsibility and facing injustice. Grant feels as if he shouldn’t feel obligated or pressured to help bring justice to Jefferson.
In chapter one, "Privilege, Oppression, and Difference, Allan Johnson begins his argument that "difference is not the problem"( Johnson, pg 5 ). The author goes on to explain that difference by itself is not the problem, rather difference in conjunction with our ideas that cause fear. That being said, discrimination was a bigger problem in the past and it still is today. We starts with talking about Rodney King and racism he had received from police officers in Los Angeles. Johnson continues on with the idea that people are judged not for who they are or the things they have accomplished, but how they are perceived by others.
He really supports this idea using rhetorical devices to further strengthen the central idea as a whole. He uses ethos as shown in this quote, “ … our bodies, full of fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities,” to persuade his audience that there should be equality by explaining how blacks have a lower quality of life as whites in this supposedly equal nation. People
The story takes place at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in America, when desegregation is finally achieved. Flannery O’Connor’s use of setting augments the mood and deepens the context of the story. However, O’Connor’s method is subtle, often relying on connotation and implication to drive her point across. The story achieves its depressing mood mostly through the use of light and darkness in the setting.
Again, this quote shows the importance of the trial, and specifically the amount riding on the verdict. The Tom Robinson trial is the most important event in the book because of the affect it has on the characters in the story and the theme it
To avoid feeling guilty from slavery whites said blacks were bad and began to oppress them. They did this through segregating them, watching their every move, and putting them in positions to commit crimes. Bigger is frustrated because he is not allowed to do anything because he is black. " When Bigger goes out onto the street he sees a poster for Buckley's campaign: “IF YOU BREAK THE LAW, YOU CAN'T WIN!” And, as Bigger knows, if you don’t break it, you keep losing.