The Struggle Of African Americans In Faulkner's Arc Of Justice

Superior Essays
Arc of Justice Analysis The amounts of themes that can be taken from this terrific book are abundant. The story makes the reader really feel and understand the struggles that the African American people faced during the 1920’s. The Sweet family is faced with the fear of riots attacking their new house in a white community. This story questions the principles of right and wrong during this time period. Gaining respect and equality was an uphill battle for African Americans during the late 1800’s to the mid 1900’s. The principles of right and wrong are not equal for all races, because of how African Americans treatment from society, law enforcement, and the principle of right and wrong was lost in their economical battle. The treatment that African Americans received from society breaks …show more content…
In the story Arc of Justice the Sweet family is treated unlawful by the cops set to protect them from the White American riot outside their home. For instance, rioters of the neighborhood threw rocks at their house breaking windows and once the windows were broken Sweet’s reinforcements send shots out into the crowd kill one white person. Schuknecht the officer “protecting” the house and reinforcement officers come in and arrest everyone in the house. This is discriminatory towards the Sweet family and others in the house even though they were in the wrong that should not have been the only ones arrested. The rioters also committed and crime should have been arrested. During this time period Police Officers look the other way when it came to White Americans committing crimes on African Americans. Another example given in the book is when mine foreman shot a black work and turned himself in, but was told to go back to work. There is always a turn of the head when crimes against African Americans were committed. The foreman should have been arrested for murdering the man in cold blood. Another important

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    In the book ‘Trouble in Mind,’ author Leon F. Litwack illustrates the hard times of slaves during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. During this time there were major hardships that African Americans had to encounter; lynching, racism, and the fight for freedom. Litwack doing his research on slave hard times since 1961 studied how hard the Jim Crow laws were mentally, and physically hard for African Americans. The book, ‘Trouble in Mind’ starts at the end of Reconstruction when the idea of whites “Redemption” spread along the south. This caused new dreams of citizenship for African Americans and freedom to die of an ungrateful death, and most likely the hardest time for African American life since slavery.…

    • 1133 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Martin Luther King Jr.'s Why We Can't Wait describes the hardships and injustices African Americans endured in the 1960s. During this period of time, they suffered spiteful acts of discrimination. The introduction to King's book uses the rhetorical devices of pathos, logos, rhetorical questions, imagery, and parallelism. Creating a sense of empathy and promoting social change are King's motives for utilizing these rhetorical strategies. The passage can be divided into three distinct sections, each with its own purpose.…

    • 612 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Redemption, The Last Battle of the Civil War Slavery, suffering, suffocation… three words that will surely make emotions rise. It is with these words that I will begin to describe the eloquent writings of this book. Throughout the span of the book, there are two themes presented: the amount of devastation survived by the Negroes and the long sought after balance of politics between Negroes and Whites. It is upon this foundation that the author, Nicholas Lemann had such courage and intelligence to write of such great happenings that caused our mother country to become of what it is today.…

    • 1010 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Wherever There’s a Fight by Elaine Elinson and Stan Yogi, is a book that narrows down the struggles of man and woman of all colors to protect and extend their civil rights liberties. It provides stories of events in history that marked the lives of many people. The stories described in the book show how many people were being discriminated for the way they looked, the disability they had, their sexualaty for being black, latino, or Japanese. It gives the reader an image of all the injustices and struggles many of these people had to go through to fight for their civil rights. The author of the book begins from the start of early California to where it becomes a state it mentions the Bear Flag Revolt, and how after the Mexican American war…

    • 1276 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In “How the Negroes Treat the Whites” by a Staunton Spectator, the author expressed how blacks in political power deny privileges to the whites. This writer went on to express his frustration with the government in trying to bring together two “incompatible” races (Virginia and Pennsylvania Newspapers on Reconstruction 582). The direct cause of the Black Codes is the fear of black overthrow of white rights and privileges. Immediate integration into society was thought of as a death sentence to American culture and the rights of white Americans. Fearing the loss…

    • 1232 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Arc Of Justice Analysis

    • 1766 Words
    • 8 Pages

    African-Americans endured several additional decades of heavy oppression and discrimination even after slavery had already been abolished post-civil war. The Jim Crow laws, which gave African-Americans obvious disadvantage in almost every way possible in the society, were in effect until 1965. These de jure racial segregation laws were put to an end after numerous protests and court cases that slowly showed the country that these laws were barbaric and inhumane. The Arc of Justice written by Kevin Boyle thoroughly explains one of the major court cases that helped America to move one step forward into reaching racial equality and justice. The Sweet trials were a triumph because the Congress passed a federal legislation banning residential segregation…

    • 1766 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The novel The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison tells the story of Pecola Breedlove, a young African American girl in Ohio who faces great adversity as a result of her race, gender, and age. She wants nothing more than to have blue eyes, believing that they would make her beautiful and improve her quality of life. She lives in a small house with her mother, Pauline, her father, Cholly, and her brother, Sammy. In an excerpt titled “Battle Royal” from Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, the narrator faces similar adversity as a result of his race. He is forced to fight in a Battle Royal against other African American men for the entertainment of a large group of white men after being invited to the event to give his graduation speech.…

    • 1251 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ever since 1787, and even before, African-Americans have struggled to gain political, legal, social, and economic equality. Although some national and state government programs were constructed to help African-Americans with this perpetual problem, it is also the same state and national government policies that expanded this problem. In fact, this is still a problem that persists today. The national and state governments definitely have gone a long way in providing African Americans with political, legal and social opportunities; however constant setbacks have lessened their effectiveness. Beginning in 1787 there was an unspoken guarantee that all states had the option to decide whether or not they wanted to be slave sates.…

    • 1951 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    In general, the African Americans resisted their new way of life and struggle to maintain their human dignity and to develop social institutions that would sustain them through the rest of their lives (Robin, Kelley & Lewis, 2005, p. 27). For the most part, in the colonial societies, the African Americans were considered the lowest of the social order. In the colonists’ view, they were considered as imported human property in which their sole purpose was to work for those who purchase their rights. In fact, they were considered as a “bad race” in which the term originated in Europe and strengthened the American cause of why they should enslave the African Americans (Robin, Kelley & Lewis, 2005, p. 27). In contrast, the…

    • 1778 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Search of the Promised Land, written by John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, presents a story of the Thomas-Rapier family who has many family members who experience their own struggles and different journeys in search of this promised land they hope to find. The authors describe different tales of Sally Thomas and her kin as they live through and encounter the harsh forces of racism and slavery. While exploring the family’s search for freedom, economic stability, and the promised land where black people would be treated equally, the authors illustrate an unknown aspect of southern history of the quasi-free slaves and free blacks. The authors were extremely successful at providing useful and insightful information about quasi-free slaves and free blacks in the south during harsh times of racism.…

    • 1238 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The characters in William Faulkner’s writings were affected by the Southern social classes. “Faulkner’s story, the one story he has to tell, is the his-story of the South into which he was born and which, in turn, has lived in his bones and words.” (Friedman) Old, new and reconstructed South; if it had anything to do about the South, Faulkner would write about it. Not many other writers understood the Southern social class like Faulkner did.…

    • 1631 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Melani Castro Frey, Silvia. " Between Slavery and Freedom: Virginia Blacks in the American Revolution." The Journal Of Southern History 49, no. 3 (1983): 375-398. Accessed October 10, 2015. doi:10.2307/2208101.…

    • 565 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Even upon their laggard release from slavery in 1865, freedmen were far from equality, justice, and most importantly, freedom. Not only is the meaning of freedom extrapolated by Eric Foner within his textbook, Give Me Liberty! An American History, it is also analyzed. Throughout Chapter 15, Foner analyzes post-civil war oppressions and injustices placed not only on black men but also including black women. To maintain credibility…

    • 1206 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When the author talked about racial persecution and segregation he brought up a good point how it was socially and ethically moral to treat African Americans as second class citizens and how we killed many upon…

    • 793 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about American life is achieving the “American Dream”. The very thought of living a life of freedom in lifestyle choice, economic opportunity, and political engagement, drove many immigrants to this country. E.L Doctorow explores this phenomenon in his novel, Ragtime. Although he speaks almost explicitly about achieving the American dream, what he does not say is almost as important. The American Dream is not achievable for African Americans, or any non-white person, who does not assimilate themselves with the help and approval of whites.…

    • 1143 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays