Arc Of Justice

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Arc of Justice

Racial issues in America have a long history, but few incidents increased the already existing tension between the White Americans and African Americans. History is filled with the accounts of injustices done to the African Americans by introducing various laws and bans. For instance, Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery in 1865, by, passing the 13th amendment to the American constitution. Racism still prevailed in the American society for decades because of White supremacists and their xenophobic attitude towards the Black minority; they would regard them as not "capable of full political participation and self-determination” (Brown 1).

Jim Crow Law was one of those laws made by the White Americans, which denied the civil liberty and civil rights of the minority groups. This law was enacted in 1877 and according to the clauses in this law, Black Americans were not allowed to use public pools and phone booths reserved for the white community at the microlevel. Similarly, there were segregation orders for schools, hospitals, lands and transport services as well at a major level. Historian Kevin Boyle discusses these events in his book Arc of Justice and the prologue, and he says, “Bit by bit, however, urban whites carved a color line through the city” (Boyle 9).

Many riots occurred due to this segregation and the book Arc of Justice deals with the story of an African American physician, Dr. Ossian Sweet. Dr. Sweet was a well-off person and he bought a house in Detroit that was located in a White residential area. When he decided to move into his house with his family members, he foresaw the situation of a white neighborhood due to the segregation policy and carried some guns for protection. He faced severe backlash from his White neighbors and when a violent White mob tried to attack his home, his brother Henry Sweet opened the fire. A white person died in the exchange of firing and rock-throwing; police arrested 11 people on the charges of murder.

Dr. Sweet wanted to live in the same locality and through the support of the NAACP, he hired attorney Clearance Darrow and started advocating the need for separate housing societies for the Black people. However, they failed in getting justice from the court and the defendants were discharged. The Civil Rights law was passed in the 1960s, but the segregation between these two ethnicities was observed and Black people were continued to be harassed by the White Americans. The Jim Crow Law gave a legal right to the majority Americans to treat the minority group inhumanely as the author puts it: “Jim Crow taught the great mass of southern whites to see ordinary places and everyday interactions as sacred” (Boyle 56).

Works Cited

Boyle, Kevin. Arc of justice: A saga of race, civil rights, and murder in the Jazz Age. Henry Holt and Company, 2007.

Ngozi-Brown, Scot. "African-American soldiers and Filipinos: racial imperialism, Jim Crow and social relations." The Journal of Negro History 82.1 (1997): 42-53.