Arc of Justice is a story of the hardships of segregation fueled by ignorance in the 1920’s. The beginning introduces the reader into the setting of Detroit reaching its industrial peak. It then chronicles Ossian Sweet, an African American physician. Him and his wife, Gladys, purchased a house in a white neighborhood in hopes of a better future and a successful family. Instead, they quickly received many threats and felt unsteady, the neighbors rejected all African American’s in their society. Raised in the South, Ossian Sweet had seen what prejudice can do to a society. Although he attempted to escape from it, he finds himself staring racism right in the face. For a book published 80 years after the fact, Kevin Boyle does a very impressive …show more content…
During that time Johnson was the general secretary of the NAACP, and knew what impact the case would have on civil rights. Given this the NAACP aided those accused of the murder of Breiner, and a first-rate defense team was in the making. Assistant secretary Walter White was the main assistant of NAACP to find the best attorneys (who were not prejudiced, of course). He later meets Arthur Garfield Hays and Clarence Darrow and urges them to take the case. After agreeing they meet their clients about a month after the accident. Boyle shows how both James Weldon Johnson and Clarence Darrow had interior motives for defending the Sweets. Both men had a love for the spotlight, when speaking about Darrow, Boyle writes "in the glare of a high-profile case he found the perfect opportunity to attack the status quo and proclaim the modernist creed." The trial itself felt more of a civil rights case than a criminal case. The most impressive thing in regards to the actual trial was the performance done by Darrow. One could draw many similarities between him and To Kill A Mockingbird’s Atticus Finch. A common misconception of the courtroom is that the jury goes strictly off of evidence when deliberating. This book clears up that false belief with the attorneys playing off of emotion and targeting pathos. A strong argument presented by Darrow can be summarized by a few statements he made in that courtroom. “You are facing a problem of two races, a problem that will take centuries to solve. If I felt none of you were prejudiced, I'd have no fear. I want you to be as unprejudiced as you can be. Draw upon your imagination and think how you would feel if you fired at some black man in a black community, and then had to be tried by
By this time Detroit had become the epicenter of the American automobile. Detroit’s grand boulevards, were now lost in this ever expanding industrial Mecca. Detroit was home to some of America’s biggest names in automotives, including Walter Chrysler, The Dodge Brothers, and the outspoken Henry Ford. Workers in these factories often earned more in wages than many unskilled labor positions around the country. As news of the high-wage jobs in the up-and-coming motor city made its way around the country, migrants began to flood the city in hopes of a better life. Overcrowding among blacks and the have-nots of society was a harsh reality in Detroit’s inner city ghetto, which went by the name of Black Bottom. Several families would cram into single family flats, often grateful to even have a place to stay. Many made due without luxuries like running water, and disease ran rampant along the dirty over-crowded streets. This migration was not often welcomed among white Detroiters. A message of “One Hundred Percent Americanism” was being spread and upheld by the Ku Klux Klan, and Negroes were not Americans. Many white Detroiters, whether they were with the KKK or not, felt that segregation was the way it should be. They feared that if blacks were to breach the color line into white neighborhoods then property values would plummet, real estate agents would not show the houses and the neighborhood would be ultimately
The theme of “a failure of justice” for African Americans living in the present-day United States dates
There are many similarities between the Scottsboro trial and the trial of Tom Robinson in the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. “No crime in American history—let alone a crime that never occurred—produced as many trials, convictions, reversals, and retrials as did an alleged gang rape of two white girls by nine black teenagers on a Southern railroad freight run on March 25, 1931” (Linder 1). The author of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, was a young girl during the Scottsboro trial and based the trial of Tom Robinson in her novel off of the Scottsboro trial of 1931. The three main similarities between the Scottsboro trial and the trial of Tom Robinson are the geographic settings, the portrayal of racism, and the specifics of the court
The racial bias against McMillian is shown in his interactions with the law enforcement, who would often yell racial slurs at McMillian (Stevenson, 2014, p. 48, 55). Another example of racial bias against McMillian is the exclusion of African-American jurors from his trial, although there were few black jurors to begin with because the case was moved to a county with a negligible African-American population (Stevenson, 2014, p. 60, 62). These two examples show the mistreatment of African-Americans in the American justice system and the manipulation courts perform to convict accused African-Americans – even when they are innocent.
Circle Justice is a Native American form of justice that a group of people that come together to help someone learn from their mistakes, to become a better person. Strengths of circle justice It reduces repeat offending more than prison for adults and at least as well as prison for youths. It provides both victims and offenders with more satisfaction that justice has been done than it did in traditional criminal justice. It reduces the crime victims' desire for violent revenge against their offenders.
I believe that the author’s motivation for writing the book was to shine a light on an important historical event. Arc of Justice was the first book written to document the story of the Sweet family. Not only does the story explain the trial of Ossian and Gladys Sweet regarding their home, but is also a testament to the terrors of racial prejudice.
According to American history, prejudice is shown through the courtroom’s jury when making decisions to send the alleged African Americans to jail. On March 24, 1931, nine African American lives were jeopardized with the false accusations of rape that further scrutinizes the nation’s controversial look upon justice. Referring to Abigail Thernson and Henry Fetter when talking about The Scottsboro Trials it states, “Represented by unprepared out of date counsel who had no more than a half an hour consult
Racial dynamics were influential in the process of the case. There was collision between judges and prosecutors about the venue for the trial. The trial was moved to Baldwin County, a white county where only one African American served as a juror. The makeup of this jury panel would not allow McMillian a fair trial, the community was known to have racial bias undertones (Stevenson, 2014). Not only would the jury not allow McMillian a fair case, but neither would the judge. Robert E. Lee Key did all that was in his power to sway the case in his favor. He tried to persuade Stevenson not to take the case and agreed to move the trial to another county that was much more conservative and had “made less progress leaving behind the racial politics of Jim Crow” (Stevenson, 62). With lack of evidence pinning McMillian
When Harper Lee was writing about the trial of Tom Robinson in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” she had a very real case to look to for inspiration. The trial of the Scottsboro Boys was a world renowned case in the 1930’s in which nine black youths were accused of raping to white girls in Alabama. Lee’s novel took this case and created the fictional case of Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a lower class white girl in a small town in Alabama during the Depression-era. The Scottsboro trials were the main source of inspiration for Lee’s novel, and although the circumstances of the novel differed from the real-life scandal, the similarities between the two cases are quite abundant.
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 prisoners were lucky enough to escape the being lynched when they were moved into Scottsboro. In this trial, nine young, black boys were charged with the rape of two white girls while on a train. This case was a major source of controversy in the 1930’s. “Despite testimony by doctors who had examined the women that no rape had occurred, the all- white jury convicted the nine, and all but the youngest, who was 12 years old were sentenced to death” (“Scottsboro”). The boys’ lawyer, Samuel Leibowitz, did not even get assigned to the case until the first day of the trial. “If he could show a jury that these nine boys were innocent, as the record indicated, the jury would surely free them. To Leibowitz, that was simple!” (Chalmers 35). However, it was not that simple. Many white citizens would not change their minds about
In the lecture “With Justice for All?” by Bryan Stevenson, he discusses his book Just Mercy as well as allows the audience to question what mercy is in America. Stevenson began the lecture by discussing how the audience has the capability to create more change, justice, and opportunity in America. Stevenson spoke about the 5 things required in order to be able to make more change for the better. The first thing that we must be able to do is that we have to be concerned about our identity. We can call ourselves students and lawyers, however, it doesn’t describe who we are. The adjectives used allow us to have our identity. We should be saying we are active and kind students, teachers, lawyers etc. The next thing that must be done in order to
In his Article, “The Range of Justice”, Gerald Gaus Explains that there will likely never be one vision of a “just society” Due to this, Gaus concludes that instead individuals have the responsibility to learn tolerance towards others whose views may be different than their own. This “moral maturity” is essential to understanding that we live in a diverse society that will likely never come to share a single conception of what is best for society as a whole, and to understand that they may be forced to live under policies and/or practices with which they may not agree.
“Justice for all,” shouted repeatedly by thousands of protester who rallied around downtown San Francisco, fighting for justice for Peter Liang. Liang, an Asian American who previously worked for NYPD, was sentenced to prison for 15 years by the grand jury for a terrible accident which caused the death of another victim. Consequently, the Asian American communities across United States opposed to the jury’s decision by protesting. “Stop injustice for minority officers,” written on many of the posters of Peter Liang, suggests that American justice system is unfair to minority communities.
The Ohio State University Theatre Department's performance of Execution of Justice, by Emily Mann, was performed ten times between April 4th and April 10th, 2018. It was directed by Tom Dugdale, this play is a dramatic retelling of the trial of The People vs Daniel James White of the killings of former Mayor of San Francisco, George Moscone, and former City Supervisor, Harvey Milk in November of 1978. The play uses actual transcripts from the trial and brings in voices of people who would not have been in the courtroom, but whose voices should have been heard.