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

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

In Arc of Justice, Kevin Boyle examines the volatile nature of race relations in early twentieth century Detroit through the lens of the experiences of Dr. Ossian Sweet. The majority of readers are most likely unaware of Dr. Sweet and his life. This narrative provides a unique and personal perspective on race relations and the infiltration of the Ku Klux Klan into a northern city, especially when people consider the Klan as a southern affectation.Boyle took the reader on a literal and figurative journey from Bartow, Florida, to Detroit, Michigan, with stops along the way in Xenia, Ohio, and Washington, D.C. Ossian Sweet was raised in Bartow, on the other “side of the tracks.” The eldest surviving child of former slaves Henry and Dora Sweet, Ossian learned early the value of hard work as well as the lesson of the cruelty of his fellow human beings. Early on, the Sweets knew they wanted more for their children than sharecropping in the South. In his early teens Ossian began attending Wilberforce University in Xenia. There he received an extensive education resulting in a bachelor’s degree, which led him to medical school at Howard University in Washington. While at Wilberforce, Ossian spent summers working in Detroit and, after graduating from Howard, opted to return to Detroit to start practicing medicine.While the Sweets – Ossian, his wife Gladys, and brothers Otis and Henry – are at the center of the story, Boyle showed that it was about more than the people involved. Once Ossian and Gladys returned from a year-long trip through Europe, one that enhanced Ossian’s medical education and allowed him to study under Anton von Eiselsberg in Vienna and Marie Curie in Paris, the couple stayed with Gladys’s parents in order to save the down payment for a home of their own. Gladys fell in love with a house on Garland Avenue, a house in a traditionally white part of town. It was the house on Garland Avenue that began the Sweets’ legal troubles.The legal plight of the Sweet brothers compels readers to examine a wide variety of issues urban areas had to deal with after the Civil War. Migration and integration are at the forefront of the changes Detroit and many other northern cities dealt with in the early 1900s. African Americans from the former Confederate states continued to migrate north with hopes of earning money and respect. At the same time, southern Europeans migrated into the United States looking for a better life than they experienced. Both groups lured by stories of fortunes being made in the automobile industry and tried to integrate themselves into life in the city.People need places to live, and those migrating to Detroit were no exception. Unfortunately, especially for African Americans, there were few options. Although not mandated by law, segregation was enforced by tradition and more often by violence. This violence, organized by local “Improvement Associations,” was apparent throughout Detroit. It was through these Improvement Associations that the Ku Klux Klan made their inroads into northern cities.Not surprisingly, the Sweets did not escape this violence when they moved to Garland Avenue. Ossian Sweet, filled with memories of violence at the hands of southern white supremacists, organized a group of men to help him defend his home. This group included friends, former classmates, and his brothers. Once the white mob began throwing stones and inflicting damage to the Sweet house, the men opened fire, killing one white man and injuring another. That same night, the Sweets and their friends were arrested and their plight became national news, even attracting the attention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and renowned attorney Clarence Darrow.Boyle used the Epilogue to describe the affects the Sweet cases had on the plight of urban race relations. The NAACP continued to fight Jim Crow laws and practices in the courts, from local venues to the US Supreme Court. Frank Murphy propelled himself from judge to mayor and eventually to the Supreme Court as well. Some attorneys went back to their usual practices, others continued to fight for justice. The Sweet brothers endured their share of ups and downs. Gladys contracted tuberculosis while incarcerated and later infected their daughter, who died shortly after her second birthday. Gladys also passed away at a young age. Henry earned his law degree and worked with the NAACP, but also died early from tuberculosis contracted in prison. Ossian became the financial success he always dreamed. However, that success did not last and he never really had a satisfying personal life again either. On the eve of the Civil Rights movement in 1960, Ossian committed suicide.The story of the Sweets' struggles in Detroit contributes to the historiography of urban race relations in both the North and the South. However, Boyle could have provided more analysis of the influences this trial had on race relations both in Detroit as well as other northern cities. He mentioned what seemed to be a common origin of organized violence, the local “Improvement Association,” but does not expound on whether or not this was a frequent phenomenon. The majority of Boyle’s analysis comes in the Prologue and adding additional context would have helped instill the importance of the Sweets’ cases on Civil Rights history.

Kevin Boyle presents a very respectful and vivid history of a single episode of absolute prejudice in the early to mid-20s. Our book club was blown away by the horror of the time when hatred blew across our country like a plague. The biggest horror is that this shameful part of U.S. history is not taught, and our parents and grandparents were so terribly ignorant of the events that were every day fears and terrors to, especially, African Americans, but also to Irish, eastern Europeans and others who didn't fit the WASP stereotype. We knew so little of the struggles of the era and virtually nothing of specific incidents. A very interesting thing to me is that the central figure in the book, Dr. Ossian Sweet, is not particularly likeable (by the reader or, seemingly, by Kevin Boyle) and so our empathy for Sweet is secondary to those others who stood with him and for him. Thank goodness for the giant minds and hearts of this striving for civil rights, and that finally justice began to gain a foothold. It seems almost miraculous that any movement forward was possible. There remains much to be done. A worthy read.

Great recounting of the 1920sMany of its problems still remain to be solvedExcellent writingMuch of it unknown to most students of history

Boyle’s meticulous research allows him to right about Ossian Sweet’s trial as if he were there. Once the trial started, I couldn’t put it down.

Although somewhat apologetic, Kevin Boyle's book "Arc of Justice" is the story of one black man's attempt to overcome the powerful forces of racism and buy a home in an all white neighborhood in Detroit. While using Sweet's personal story as an example, Boyle traces the history of racial tensions, first in the Reconstruction South and then in the supposedly more race-friendly North, while focusing most specifically on the issue of housing discrimination. Although Ossian Sweet never wanted to be a symbol for his people, it falls upon him when he and his friends are forced to defend his house on the first two nights after he moves in. When one of them shoots and kills one of the white mob congregating outside Ossian's home, he, his wife, and nine others are brought to trial for murder. What follows is a fascinating exposition of the legal and racial issues facing Ossian and his friends, and an exciting courtroom drama with Clarence Darrow in the lead. Boyle is an excellent writer and the book reads quickly and easily. It is a story both tragic and triumphant. I nearly cried in the end. For anyone who thinks that racism and segregation are exclusively Southern phenomenon, this book will surely enlighten the reader to the true reality of racism in the North. And if you think that today its pretty much a thing of the past, this book will show you that "segregation" has little improved since the 1920s. A sobering thought for all of us.

Needed for my daughter's history project. She gave up half way through as writing very small. Interesting read though

面白い本というのは、ある共通の問いを発しているように思われます。それは、「誰もが陥る可能性がある答えのない矛盾に陥った時、人はどのように決断し、どんな行動をとるのだろうか？」という問いです。この本もそんな問いかけをしています。物語は、一人の黒人医師が犯した殺人をめぐる裁判の話なのですが、１９２０年代の黒人差別主義が盛んなデトロイトでさまざまな矛盾が生み出されます。当時南北戦争による黒人開放とデトロイトやシカゴの北部にある自動車産業等の発展により、アメリカ南部より多くの黒人が政治的自由と経済的自立を求めて北部にやって来ます。北部の白人達も黒人という安価な労働力を無制限に受け入れていきます。やがて都市の黒人人口はあふれ、街の境界線を越えて裕福な黒人達は白人の居住区へ進出して行きます。そのため家を担保に借金をして暮らしていた白人労働者階級は、黒人が来たために不動産の価格が下落することを恐れて、黒人を排除しようとします。そんなとき、「もし誰かが集団で自分に危害を加えて彼らのテリトリーから自分を追い出そうと脅したときに、自分自身とその権利を守るために殺人を犯したら、それは正当な行為とみなされるだろうか？」という問いが発せられます。確かに殺人という行為は行き過ぎなのですが、当時の政治の状況では、白人も黒人もお互いに解決の難しい矛盾の中にいます。そんな状況の中でお互いにどう行動し、司法がどういう判断を下すのか？非常に興味深い問題です。この本は、そんな問いを発しながら、司法と政治の絡まりあった裁判を通して当時の時代背景と空気をリアルに描いています。また、伝説的な弁護士の登場などもあり、法廷エンターテイメントものとしても一級の出来栄えです。ジョン・グリシャムの‘A time to kill'など好きな方にはお勧めです！