Black Child Saving Movement In America Summary

Ward’s writing is honest and eye-opening. This book is based off of history and its pages are filled with historical accounts of the juvenile justice system. It is obvious to the reader that the subject was very carefully researched because of his use of not only major historical events, but minor events that were going on behind the scenes and unbeknownst to the public. His writing is national in scope, but broad chronologically. He covers a large period of time and does not skimp on detail. His original does was to write a “contemporary statistical study of race and juvenile justice with a brief historical background section” (p. 1), but became preoccupied with the historical significance of the subject and felt the need to cover the absence of a historical background on the topic. The terminology of this book is very technical and could be difficult for non-academics to understand without a search engine or dictionary next to them, but overall his scholarly and critical writing style was easy to follow, as his opinions were made very clear.
Part one discusses the beginnings of Jim Crow juvenile justice and how racism prevailed throughout the formation of the juvenile court system in America. Part two covers the Black Child-Saving Movement in America with integration in the system and how different activists spoke out against racism. Ward does a good job of going in chronological order to cover many topics, especially in part two of the book and pre/post-civil rights movement eras. There is a natural flow of the book which starts from the beginning of parens patriae and ends with Ward’s ideas on how to proceed and the differing developments that have limited the potential for African Americans to impose their ever-present concerns with the juvenile justice