Legal imagery
The imagery of court, law, police enforcement, and judgment are all part of the legal imagery of American politics. This imagery is the setting for power at the government level, especially in this case, because the case against the Groveland Boys is taken to the Supreme Court. The imagery of legal or illegal defines the accusations against them, but when Thurgood Marshall takes the case, he turns the imagery into another kind of consideration: Is the court truly impartial, or is there injustice at play?
The threat of death
For stepping on the toes of the majority, Thurgood has to fear death. This threat of death is not ambient or speculative; it is painfully real. Two of his clients are murdered by a police conspiracy in Florida before the retrial is finished. The threat of death is an ironic imagery in this case because the injustice of murder in cold blood is held in tandem with the case against the Groveland Boys. Somehow, these people want a kind of justice besides "innocent until proven guilty."
Change and chaos
The book is also a helpful commentary on the way political change happens at a macro-level. The historical remembrance of these events shows that chaos is an unavoidable part of change. The Civil Rights movement was a full-blown descent into chaos for the nation because the power structure of the nation was shifting toward actual justice, and the privileged white supremacists kick against the goads of change—often by inciting violence, or by police corruption, or even by lynching innocent Black men. The horror of chaos is difficult to face.
Victimhood and privilege
For these white supremacists, perception and reality are way different. In their perspective, the nation is falling off the rails. They are like conservatives with concerns about the liberal agenda, but in this case, their feelings stem from their dehumanizing and racist opinions about African American people. The Jim Crow laws and the KKK are evidence of this opinion. In this case, the imagery of their privilege (their constant enfranchisement to power) makes them unwilling to let equality emerge, because in their privileged and outlandish state of mind, they actually begin to feel they are the true victims of race relations in America. Nothing could be further from the truth, and that is what makes this imagery so powerful; it shows the outcome of delusion and group think.
