Summary Of Arc Of Justice

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