Analysis Of Kevin Boyle s Arc Of Justice - 1585 Words

Nathan Bondurant Book Review One In Kevin Boyle’s Arc of Justice: A saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age, the author creates a way to describe the discrimination and horrible racial treatment inflicted on the African American community following the civil war and continuing into the 1900’s by following a black doctor’s life and his controversy in equality. The author sets the scene in the booming city of Detroit, a place many blacks ventured to when trying to escape the cruelty Jim Crow Laws forced upon many African Americans. The great migration of blacks fleeing to Detroit in search of a new life brought an increase of over seventy thousand people in just the short span of fifteen years. This sudden unwanted abundance of people, still disliked even in the North, lead to a city full of racial prejudices and unjust discrimination. The author introduces an educated African American doctor named Ossian Sweet. Sweet was a child of slaves sent away to create a prosperous life he deserved. He was a wealthy black man who decided to rent a home in an all-white neighborhood with his wife and child even after being warned not to. In his preparation of the uproar his white neighbors would have, he brought several black colleagues and friends of his along with an assortment of guns to defend his newly acquired house. Boyle describes how Sweet saw â€Å"the scene he’d dreaded all his life†- a mob of hateful white people looking to end his life. In an act of defense a shotShow MoreRelatedMiddle Life Analysis: Arc of Justice1902 Words   |  8 PagesMiddle Life Analysis; Arc of Justice â€Å"American cities didn’t simply sparkle in the summer of 1925. They simmered with hatred, deeply divided as always† (Boyle, 2005, p. 6). Life was extremely difficult for African Americans during the early 1920s; a period of time that was better known as the segregation era. In the book Arc of Justice, written by Kevin Boyle, the words â€Å"racism† and â€Å"segregation† play a significant role. Boyle focuses in the story of Ossian Sweet, a young African