To contextualize the segregation and anti-Black prejudice faced by the Sweets and other Black residents of Detroit, Arc of Justice delves into American history to trace the uneven progress towards integration and civil rights for Black Americans. In the years immediately following the end of the American Civil War, the federal government instituted a series of policies, called “Reconstruction.” These were designed to integrate formerly enslaved people into politics, the economy, and American society in the South. White Southerners—both the wealthy planters who had previously enslaved Black people on their plantations and the poorer white citizens who had at least…