Two heartbreaking tales of small-town injustice revealing America's struggles with AIDS and racial bias in the 1980s
Florida Historical Society Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Award
In the 1980s, the tiny town of Arcadia, Florida, was "fifty miles and fifty years from Sarasota." With its cowboy roots, low-wage agricultural industries, and violent frontier history, Arcadia was a curious mix of the desolate ranchlands of West Texas and the stately homes and bitter race relations of the South. In A Town without Pity, award-winning author Jason Vuic recounts two heartbreaking stories from Arcadia that rose to national prominence at the end of the Reagan era and forced the town to reckon with not only AIDS hysteria but also the legacies of a racist past.
>
Through extensive use of newspapers, court records, and interviews, Vuic shows how the actions of authorities and residents left little room for the voices that spoke up against bias, harassment, and coercion. At the same time, this cautionary tale places Arcadia as a microcosm of many small towns in the late twentieth-century United States, reminding readers of the staying power of social divisions and prejudice even after the achievements of the civil rights movement.