Praying for Sheetrock
The book Praying for Sheetrock, written by Melissa Fay Green, took place in McIntosh County, Georgia during the spring time where flowers “stood up in the yards in colors so bright they seemed almost musical” (Greene 118). Within McIntosh County was the city of Darien where the blacks and whites lived separately. In this city lived Ed Finch, a colored man who was taller than average, heavy, and muscular (Greene 118). He lived by a woman named Mary Harmon in an impoverished area near a city jail. Finch and Harmon would often flirt around with each other out in the yard. One day Police Officer Hutchinson came to the area where they lived to hush them and the other black people around them. At this moment is when everything
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Police Officer Pantaleo arrested Garner “for allegedly selling loose cigarettes” (www.npr.org). During the arrest, Officer Pantaleo had put Garner in a chokehold position which caused Garner to suffocate. There was a video posted on YouTube of Garner saying he was not able to breathe while he was being held in a headlock. The man died because of the chokehold, but the grand jury, back in December of 2014, did not charge Officer Pantaleo. People protested in reaction to the officer not being charged for the death of Eric Garner and that led to the launch of the civil rights investigation for this case by the Justice Department (www.npr.org). In comparison to Ed Finch’s story, both men had their community protested for an investigation about their occurrence. The results of the investigation was that Officer Pantaleo was not charged as opposed to Chief Hutchinson being suspended. There were dissimilarities in the circumstances of their arrests. Garner was unarmed and did not fight the arrest, with the exception of trying to move to breathe, while Finch tried to hit the officer with a nearby garden tool. The means of death for the two men differed in that Finch died due to a shooting while Garner died due to a