Soul Purpose

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Dr. Kele Sewell s Soul Purpose presents two stories, one fiction and one based on historical fact, but both delving into the depths of hatred racism brings. In 1965 rural Georgia, blacks couldn t eat in the same restaurants or share bathrooms with the white population. Kelly, a young Caucasian boy, grew up in Forsyth County, Georgia. The son of an alcoholic and racist father, Kelly s formative years were charged with the racial hatred of that era. But Kelly s mother was different; she instead told her son about the importance of viewing individuals as equals no matter the color of their skin. Kelly s life could have gone toward ignorance and hatred or toward understanding. Luckily, he meets an African American psychiatrist, Dr. Hubble. With that introduction and his mother s guidance, Kelly is able to break the cycle of racism that plagued his family s history. Decades earlier, in 1912 in the same community, a white woman named Mae Crowe was raped and murdered. Her father, also the local district attorney, sentenced two black men to a public hanging for the crime. Race riots broke out, forcing the community s black citizens to sell their homes for a fraction of their value and leave the county. Sewell s noteworthy novel artfully blends fact and fiction to give the reader a greater understanding of racism spanning the last century. Its message is a significant, social commentary about the necessity of healing deep racial wounds, both real and imagined, to bring about change. "