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

Rating:
Summary: Engrossing and fascinating story
Review: 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

Rating:
Summary: Masterful story-telling
Review: Didn't know anything about this book or the story it tells when I started reading it. My wife had purchased it, but she was still finishing off other books, and I had nothing left on my shelf, so I temporarily swiped this one from her. I was blown away.

I generally enjoy reading books about historical events, and found this one to be truly exceptional. The first chapter is as much of a "page-turner" as anything I've ever read, and after that lead, I could not dream of putting this book down until I found out what happened to these people.

Fortunately, the rest of the book is almost as compelling as the beginning. Boyle really makes 1925 Detroit and the characters in this story come alive. A masterful work of story-telling.

I did recently find out that this book won the National Book Award for non-fiction, an award it certainly merits. I couldn't give it a stronger recommendation.

Rating:
Summary: Ends very well, and excellently researched
Review: I read this because it won the National Book Award for nonfiction last year, and I try to read those winners. I thought the early part of the book was not very attention-holding and in trying to analyze why I concluded that it was because the author is so eager to give us his politically correct opinion--whereas if he had been more objective his thesis would have been better illustrated. Don't get me wrong, I agree entirely with the author's views but I just thought that parading them was detracting and he would have been better advised to be more objective. But the book becomes more attention-holding as we get to the trials, and the latter part of the book is excellent reading. The research is impeccable. I so appreciate authors who go to original sources rather than using a secondary source for things they could go to original sources for. I was struck by the fact that Supreme Court Justice-to-be Frank Murphy, Reinhold Niebuhr, and David Lilienthal, all before they became famous, had roles in the events which are the central concern of the book related to Detroit in 1925. And the portrayal of Clarence Darrow and his methods is really well-done. On balance, the book is well worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, compelling reading
Review: 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.



Rating:
Summary: brilliant history of race relations in Jazz-age Detroit
Review: There are times when a historical reconstruction is so outstanding that it achieves the level of art. This is one of the few descriptive histories that does, in my reading experience. I was utterly spellbound by the story - of a driven and talented black man who killed to defend himself and became a national figure during his trial - and enveloped in a narrative of both literary beauty and moral power. It is superlatively written, erudite, and thoroughly American.

The story begins with a young doctor, who buys a house in a working class district of Detroit. With the combination of fear that real estate values will fall and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in reaction to the new cosmopolitanism emerging in the Jazz Age, his neighbors gather into a mob to eject him - violently. But he is ready to defend himself with great courage and pride, and does so when the police fail to act. An apparently innocent man is killed, the doctor is arrested, and a complicated legal and political process begins.

The tableau that the author paints is richly textured with historical background and a cast of remarkable characters. He begins with a history of the failure of Reconstruction through the industrial revolution of mass manufacturing in the post World War I era. It is rivetting and evoked with great depth and literary elegance.

The personalities involved are unusual and first rate. There is Ossian, the doctor, whose psychology is intricately portrayed. Having witnessed a racial lynching in Florida as a boy, from a peasant family, he reaches the highest level possible for his station in 1920s American society - a professional doctor in Dubois' "talented tenth" who studied in Europe - and was determined to impress his young wife (and his peers) with his self-serving resolve. So against the advice of many and with the shallow promises of help from his colleague-peers, he bought a house in the white district and stuck to his guns.

Once the "self defense" incident took place, the NAACP got involved. There is James Weldon Johnson and his remarkable publicist, White, who saw the case as a way to test the American court systen to advance their race; it was a spectacular predessessor to what culminated in the 1950s. Both of them are unique for their talents - Johnson was a songwriter of Broadway hits and White wrote a bestselling novel in two weeks between journlist jobs - and devoted to advancing their race in a typically audacious American way in the courts.

Then there are Ossian's lawyers, first of all Clarence Darrow, but also many others, who challenged the legal apparatus as they enhanced their celebrity. I knew very little about Darrow and the others, and each mini-biography was revelation - and indeed an inspiration - to me. The case was of great legal significance, and the narrative loses nothing of its flow in the recounting of it. Finally, there is a good followup to what happened to all the characters, including the enigmatic Ossian, which adds additional perspective.

In sum, this is an absolutely first-rate book, a masterpiece of history investigation and, even better, plain good storytelling. I will never forget its depth and I hope the author continues.

Highest reccomendation.

Rating:
Summary: A Scathing Indictment
Review: This is a compelling and finely written history of the Ossian Sweet matter, culminating in the dramatic trial in which the defendants were represented by Clarence Darrow and Arthur Hays. It is very hard to put down and Boyle brings the reader into the front row of the action.

But this book is also a distressing and honest look at American society in the 1920s and the rampant racism infecting northern cities for the first time, as blacks began to migrate north. None of the other reviewers even mention this aspect of the book and I think it the most powerful. This is not merely a crime drama, although it is that too. It is a vivid depiction of the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the north, the mob rule that spread like wildfire through Detroit, Gary, Washington, Springfield, Tulsa, and many other cities, and the terror that was inflicted daily on people who had allegedly been set free 60 years earlier. I do not know much about the history of black America during the 1920s, and it was a series of horrifying revelations. I am surprised that none of the reviewers has come away from reading this book with the same sense of dreary remorse as I felt.

Rating:
Summary: Very good, but the year's best?
Review: This is a very good and well researched book but I'm surprised it won the National Book Award due to the flaws it does have. This is from the new school of writing which makes the reader wish there was a limit on the time an author may spend researching his book. The result is more a list of facts with words to join them together than a story. Ossian Sweet probably passed a man named Robert in the hall, who research shows was the janitor - who cares? (this is not an actual quote from the book). Worse yet is the lack of objectivity. America's record of race relations is horrible enough on its own that attempts to exaggerate it are unproductive. When whites kill a black man in this book they slaughter viciously without provocation, but when blacks kill policemen in random acts they are frightened and make a mistake. Again, the facts are shocking and tell the story, no 'spin' is necessary. Beyond these substantive flaws are inexcusably basic editing problems. Winning the National Book Award should take more than spell-check. Pouring and poring are both words, but they're not the same word, nor are peak and peek interchangeable. I don't mean to be overly negative, this is an important book about a period in general and events in particular which deserve to be written about well, and Mr. Boyle does so. But if this is truly the best non-fiction book of last year let's call it a lean year and look forward to 2005.