Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age [Paperback]

Kevin Boyle (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 14, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0805079335 | ISBN-13: 978-0805079333 | Edition: Reprint

An electrifying story of the sensational murder trial that divided a city and ignited the civil rights struggle

In 1925, Detroit was a smoky swirl of jazz and speakeasies, assembly lines and fistfights. The advent of automobiles had brought workers from around the globe to compete for manufacturing jobs, and tensions often flared with the KKK in ascendance and violence rising. Ossian Sweet, a proud Negro doctor-grandson of a slave-had made the long climb from the ghetto to a home of his own in a previously all-white neighborhood. Yet just after his arrival, a mob gathered outside his house; suddenly, shots rang out: Sweet, or one of his defenders, had accidentally killed one of the whites threatening their lives and homes.

And so it began-a chain of events that brought America's greatest attorney, Clarence Darrow, into the fray and transformed Sweet into a controversial symbol of equality. Historian Kevin Boyle weaves the police investigation and courtroom drama of Sweet's murder trial into an unforgettable tapestry of narrative history that documents the volatile America of the 1920s and movingly re-creates the Sweet family's journey from slavery through the Great Migration to the middle class. Ossian Sweet's story, so richly and poignantly captured here, is an epic tale of one man trapped by the battles of his era's changing times.

 

Arc of Justice is the winner of the 2004 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

History professor Boyle (The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945–1968) has brilliantly rescued from obscurity a fascinating chapter in American history that had profound implications for the rise of the Civil Rights movement. With a novelist's craft, Boyle opens with a compelling prologue portraying the migration of African-Americans in the 1920s to the industrial cities of the North, where they sought a better life and economic opportunity. This stirring section, with echoes of Dickens's Hard Times, sets the stage for the ordeal of Dr. Ossian Sweet, who moves with his young family to a previously all-white Detroit neighborhood. When the local block association incites a mob to drive Sweet back to the ghetto, he gathers friends and acquaintances to defend his new home with a deadly arsenal. The resulting shooting death of a white man leads to a sensational murder trial, featuring the legendary Clarence Darrow, fresh from the Scopes Monkey trial, defending Sweet, his family and their associates. This popular history, which explores the politics of racism and the internecine battles within the nascent Civil Rights movement, grips right up to the stunning jaw-dropper of an ending. 8 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

In the steamy summer of 1925, Detroit, like many northern cities, was in the throes of rising tension from racism as native-born whites, immigrants, and blacks, drawn by the flourishing automobile industry, jockeyed for jobs and housing in the teeming metropolis. In the jazz-age era of changing social mores and rising expectations, Dr. Ossian Sweet, grandson of a slave, attempted to move into a working-class white neighborhood. His neighbors, fanned into a panic by avaricious real-estate brokers and the growing presence of the Ku Klux Klan, threaten Sweet and his family with violent eviction. In self-defense, Sweet and his friends arm themselves and end up killing a member of the mob. The murder indictment of Sweet, his wife, and their defenders attracts Clarence Darrow as defense attorney and the newly organized NAACP, which was in the midst of a national campaign against racial restrictions in housing. Boyle, a history professor, brings immediacy and drama to the social and economic factors that ignited racial violence, provoked the compelling court case, and set in motion the civil rights struggle. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 415 pages
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks; Reprint edition (April 14, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805079335
• ISBN-13: 978-0805079333
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.8 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #20,155 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #15 in Books > Law > Legal History
  • #31 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > Civil Rights & Liberties
  • #35 in Books > Law > Criminal Law

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

79 of 86 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, compelling reading October 21, 2004

By W. E. Horner III

Format:Hardcover

In the afterward to his brilliant and captivating "Arc of Justice," the story of a pivotal but largely forgotten incident in America's Civil Rights movement in 1925 Detroit, historian Kevin Boyle writes that segregation is so "deeply entrenched" in this country that it can't be uprooted. Even today, he writes, black and white neighborhoods across the United States are "separated by enduring discriminatory practices, racial fears and hatreds, and the casual acceptance by too many people that there is no problem to address."

It's a stunning statement to many, no doubt, yet surprising in its obliqueness: a century of lynchings and race riots following the Civil War are over, having taken a full hundred years to slow to a crawl and then die. But many vestiges of discrimination remain. Because the practice has continued, many of us give no pause to the one singular thriving aspect the black/white conflict, that of racial segregation in our cities and towns. Residential segregation continues to go unchecked because, from the comfort of our living rooms and our front porches, we continue to proudly (but blindly) proclaim that - as some citizens of Detroit in 1925 proclaimed - we harbor no prejudices.

Boyle's meticulous research delves into that problem - the intersection of prejudice and the marketplace and the role that force plays in maintaining the color line, particularly with respect to restrictive covenants in real estate - by examining the story of Ossian and Gladys Sweet, a black doctor and his wife who purchased a home in a white neighborhood in Detroit in the simmering summer of 1925.... The second night in their new residence, some 600 men, women and children ignored the presence of a half-dozen policemen there to protect the Sweets and began to barrage the two-story house with stones, shattering its windows and walls and the fragile psyche of the frightened Sweets and the eight friends there to help protect them from the onslaught they knew was coming.

Before the night was over, shots were fired from the Sweets' new residence. One neighbor was killed and another wounded.

"Arc of Justice" is the story of that night and its aftermath, particularly focusing on the trial of the Sweets and their eight companions on the charge of murder. It is equal parts history lesson, biography, courtroom drama and legal textbook, and takes the reader into the intense struggle of the working black in America during a time and place when America never seemed to work harder - in the 1920s in a lower- to middle-class, fast-growing city. It details the unique set of circumstances that would combine to create a scenario where four score Detroit factory workers, wives and other neighbors would, without reservation, conspire together under the guise of "neighborhood improvement" to oust the unwelcome visitors by any means necessary - and then to blatantly lie about it in court.

It also tells the story of how the NAACP (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) took on the Sweet case, eventually hiring Clarence Darrow - just months removed from the Scopes "Monkey Trial" that solidified his place in history - as its lead attorney. Boyle shows clearly how necessary it was for someone like Darrow to take on the case. Even though the law was on the Sweets' side, society wasn't - and a right verdict in the case would have never happened had not Darrow and others dedicated to Civil Rights and the real practice of equality under the law poured so much effort into it.

To understand how the Sweets' story could have taken place, Boyle devotes two detailed chapters to telling the important and fascinating story about what happened between the races in the period from Reconstruction to the Roaring 20s. The Emancipation Proclamation (in 1863) and the Reconstruction that followed the end of the Civil War in 1865 did little to improve the lives of Southern blacks. Slavery ended, of course, but the abject poverty of the black laborer continued to be a constant companion. Blacks, by law, had new rights. But the law did little to stop violence against blacks: lynchings and race riots were common, and in the South, the fiscal responsibility that came with freedom kept most former slaves, and their kin, in bondage. To keep the black man down, some states enacted laws designed to limit the freedom of blacks; in many towns, poll taxes and other forms of formalized segregation made life, for some, more difficult than in the days of slavery.

In the North, however, things were different. New technology, powerful industrial mergers and an incredible optimism followed the end of World War I, and as the 1920s dawned, the great migration began change the face, literally, of the nation: blacks moved in masses from the stifling oppression of the South to go to work in the factories of the North. In one 15-year period, the number of colored citizens living in New York City increased from 91,000 to 300,000; in Detriot, where Henry Ford was beginning to build an automotive empire, their numbers grew from 5,700 to nearly 91,000 between 1910 and 1925.

The migration of Europeans to the North turned its giant cities into melting pots of language and culture. Many native-born Americans denounced the arriving waves of foreigners. But their sentiments almost paled as they braced themselves for the immigrants from Alabama and Georgia and Louisiana. Not only did blacks make the trip northward; Jim Crow did as well. Northern cities didn't always have the formal forms of segregation found in the south, but as more and more blacks moved there, more types of segregation could be found - and Detroit led the way.

Driven by the growth of Ford's factories, Detroit grew at a phenomenal rate. In 1900, there were 285,000 people living there; by 1925, when Ossian and Gladys moved to Garland Avenue, a few miles east of downtown, the city's population was 1.25 million. Inevitably, black professionals began to escape the "Black Bottom" slums and move into nicer neighborhoods, and in the summer of 1925, violence against blacks moving into homes previously occupied - and surrounded - by whites was common.

The Sweets stood up for themselves and in many ways prevailed. But the small gains that resulted from their case came at a high price for many of those involved.

The author, Boyle, a native of Detroit, is an associate professor of history at Ohio State University. He's written three other books dealing with the working class, labor and unions. Arc of Justice is an incredible work, more enthralling than any work of fiction I've read. It's truth, but it's sad truth. Thanks to Boyle, those truths won't be forgotten. Ignored, perhaps, but not forgotten. Read more ›

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A riveting true story of the nascent Civil Rights Movement. June 10, 2005

By Jana L. Perskie HALL OF FAMEVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Kevin Boyle, a history professor, and National Book Award-winning author of "Arc of Justice: A Saga of Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age," has written the best true crime book I have ever read, including Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood." A Detroit native, Boyle tells one of the city's most important civil rights episodes - the September night in 1925 when black people took up arms to defend their home from a white mob. His narrative of the sensational murder trial, which ignited the Civil Rights Movement, is electrifying! Boyle's research is meticulous. He interweaves the incidents leading up to the murder, the police investigation, and the courtroom drama of the trial, with history that documents the volatile America of the 1920's. He re-creates the Sweet family's inspirational journey from slavery through the Great Migration to the middle class. "Arc Of Justice" reads like a suspense thriller! I was riveted to the page. I thought I was relatively well informed about the Civil Rights Movement. However, I was amazed at how little I did know, especially about the period before the mid-1950's. I learned so much from this book about the significant and fascinating history of the Great Migration and many of the events which took place afterwards, especially in the North during the 1920's.

"I have always been interested in the colored people. I had lived in America because I wanted to...The ancestors of the Negroes came here because they were captured in Africa and brought to America in slave ships, and had been obliged to toil for three hundred years without reward. When they were finally freed from slavery they were lynched in court and out of court, and driven into mean, squalid outskirts and shanties because they were black.......I realize that defending Negroes, even in the North, was no boy's job, although boys were usually given the responsibility."

With these words, Attorney Clarence Darrow, a civil libertarian, best known for defending John T. Scopes in the so-called "Monkey Trial," agreed to act as co-defense counsel for Dr. and Mrs. Ossian Sweet, as well as two of the doctor's brothers, Otis and Henry Sweet and seven of their friends and colleagues. They were all accused of conspiracy to commit murder, and murder in the first degree. The young, upright Sweet family's real crime was to buy a bungalow in a previously all-white working class neighborhood in Detroit, and move into their home, on September 8, 1925. A few friends and relatives helped them make the move and volunteered to remain with the family in case of trouble.

When rumors circulated of the purchase of the house on Garland Ave. by a Negro family, a new neighborhood improvement association was quickly formed. The newly appointed secretary arranged for a meeting to be held in the local school auditorium. The crowd of middle class whites attending overflowed the large room. This new organization was one of many neighborhood associations established across America, at that time, which "unleashed real estate market's arsenal of discriminatory practices, trying to impose restrictive constraints." The principal speaker for the meeting was a representative from another local group that had successfully driven African American, Dr. Alexander Turner, from his new home the month before. The message, "keep Garland safe from colored invasion."

The grandson of run-away slaves, Ossian Sweet put himself through college and medical school by stoking coal and waiting tables. Howard University, where he studied medicine, was the nation's preeminent black university. Although he had achieved the long-held dreams of his family, to become a respected member of the middle class, he still had terrifying memories from his childhood in Florida, of lynchings and unspeakable violence against black people. His childhood fears, exacerbated by his new neighbors' threats, propelled the doctor to invite his brothers and some friends to keep watch with him in case violence broke out. Sweet was well aware that his country was deeply divided, seething with hatred of minorities, (blacks in particular). The burgeoning presence of the Ku Klux Klan in the North, (by 1924, Detroit's Klan had 35,000 members), with their very public and menacing rallies, was extremely threatening. The summer of 1925 had been particularly hot. There was racial violence almost everywhere in urban Detroit. By the night of September 8, the tension in his neighborhood was palpable. Although frightened, Sweet thought he was ready to defend his home. He prepared himself for the expected mob and bought nine guns and enough ammunition for himself and the others, to be used only if necessary. He also notified the Detroit police of his planned move and asked for protection. The Sweet's infant daughter stayed at his wife's mother's home.

A crowd of 100 to 150 people gathered in front of the Sweet house for much of the night of September 8, but except for one barrage of rocks thrown against the house, no violence occurred. The next evening Gladys Sweet worked in the kitchen preparing a meal, while Ossian and his acquaintances played cards. At one point, they looked out the windows to see a swelling crowd filling the area surrounding their home - nearly 1000 people. According to the Sweets, stones began flying. The eleven people, shut up in the house on Garland Ave. were very nervous and afraid. Threats of violence and racial epithets were audible. Ossian Sweet said later, "the whole situation filled me with an appalling fear - a fear that no one could comprehend but a Negro, and that Negro, one who knew the history behind his people."

After rocks smashed through an upstairs window, shots were fired from the Sweet home. One of the bullets struck thirty-three-year-old Leon Breiner in the back as he stood nearby. Another man lay with a bullet wound to the leg. Six policeman, (who had been present at the time of the shooting, but did nothing to restrain the mob), entered the Sweet home and arrested the eleven occupants, including Gladys Sweet. At police headquarters, the Sweets and their friends were told, for the first time, that a man had been killed and another wounded. An assistant prosecutor informed them that he planned to recommend first degree murder warrants against all eleven, and then promptly jailed them.

From her jail cell, Gladys proclaimed, "Though I suffer and am torn loose from my fourteen-month-old baby, I feel it is my duty to the womanhood of my race. If I am freed I shall return and live at my home on Garland Avenue."

Author Boyle describes, brilliantly, how the end of WWI launched the Great Migration of Negroes from the rural South to the urban North. "There were 5700 blacks living in Detroit in 1910, 91,000 in New York City. Fifteen years later, Detroit had 81,000 black citizens, NYC almost 300,000." By 1925, Americans were deeply divided by hatred for those who were "different;" those who were not white and Protestant.

This popular history, which explores the politics of racism and the bitter battles within the nascent Civil Rights movement, compels the reader to keep turning the pages. The writing is fluid, intelligent and lyrical at times. "Arc Of Justice's" conclusion will, shock and surprise. There are 8 pages of color photographs included. This is one book I will keep and recommend highly to others. Kudos!
JANA Read more ›

27 of 32 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Engrossing and fascinating story September 18, 2004

By K. A. Kerr

Format:Hardcover

Arc of Justice is a superbly crafted book, such good reading that it is hard to put it down. On top of that, the author, a member of the History Department at Ohio State University, is a real scholar, careful with his facts, well-grounded in the scholarly literature of American history, and--this is especially noteworthy--able to show the reader how the story of Ossian Sweet has a larger significance.

In sum, treat yourself to a great read! If this book does not get the most serious consideration possible for the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes, then there is no justice in this world

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Pivotal Moment, Well Told June 22, 2005

By Ricky Hunter VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Kevin Boyle, in Arc of Justice, is very adept at creating a picture of a particular time and place, Detroit in the 1920s, that was the creation of the era that came before it and the harbinger of times to come. In 1925 a man, Ossian Sweet, is on trial for defending his property after moving into a white neighbourhood and he is defended by one of the most controversial men of his times, Clarence Darrow, but within this story are many strands stretching all across the country entangling many other vivid (and vividly portrayed) personalities. The author is amazingly effective in bringing into focus this complex story and the reader will be gripped by this true tale as both the KKK and the NAACP drift by. It is an intense, powerful read that shows, in many ways, how we got to where we are and how we have not gone as far as was once dreamed. That could be just some of Clarence Darrow's pessimism creeping in but it is hard not to be gripped by any encounter with that man, partiularly as well done as the one in this book. A very good piece of history.