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

by Kevin Boyle

• ISBN13: 9780805071450
• ISBN10: 0805071458
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2004-09-07
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Kevin Boyle, a professor of history at Ohio State University, is the author of The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945-1968. A former associate professor at the University of Massachusetts, he is also the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies.
He lives in Bexley, Ohio.

Table of Contents

Prologue: AMERICA: 1925	1	(12)
One: WHERE DEATH WAITS	13	(31)
Two: AIN'T NO SLAVERY NO MORE	44	(26)
Three: MIGRATION	70	(32)
Four: UPLIFT ME, PRIDE	102	(31)
Five: WHITE HOUSES	133	(37)
Six: THE LETTER OF YOUR LAW	170	(27)
Seven: FREEDMEN, SONS OF GOD, AMERICANS	197	(32)
Eight: THE PRODIGAL SON	229	(31)
Nine: PREJUDICE	260	(40)
Ten: JUDGMENT DAY	300	(37)
Epilogue: REQUIESCAM	337	(10)
NOTES	347	(50)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	397	(6)
INDEX	403