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

Boyle, Kevin

ISBN 10: 0805071458 / ISBN 13: 9780805071450

Published by Henry Holt and Co., 2004

About this Item

Book is Poor condition. Good for reading, not pretty to look at! The pages and cover are soiled and/or yellowed, worn throughout.

Seller Inventory # 0805071458-2-6

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
• Publication Date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805071458
• ISBN 13: 9780805071450
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Poor
• Weight: 1.65 pounds

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Author

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.