Arc of Justice by Kevin Boyle

Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age by Kevin Boyle
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Kevin Boyle's Arc of Justice includes a large amount of backstory. After the precipitating events, he writes what is essentially a biography of Ossian Sweet, the Black Detroit physician who buys a bungalow in a white neighborhood in 1925. He invites several friends and his brothers to stay at the house when a white mob arrives to drive the Sweets out. They are well-armed. Shots are fired from the house, and a white man is killed. All of the occupants of the Sweet house are arrested and put on trial for murder. The NAACP sends attorneys, and eventually persuades the famous Clarence Darrow to lead the defense team. The trial is covered in great detail.

Actually, all of the information in the book proved useful in understanding the events of the time, but it should have been condensed. It was assumed the reader knew nothing about the racial situation in Detroit before WWII. I'm sure people who don't know much about Detroit race relations will not be reading the book anyway.

View all my reviews