Arc of Justice by Kevin BoyleBoyle is a History Professor at Northwestern University and his book won the National Book Award for Non-Fiction in 2004.As the clerk of the court prepared to administer the jurors their oath, the Great Defender [Darrow] leaned over the press table on the opposite side of the room. “The case is won or lost now,” he said sotto voce. “The rest is window dressing.”This is a phenomenal work of micro-history. I was born and raised in Michigan, yet somehow I knew none of t...

A long, slow, excellent read. Each dense level---the personal story of Dr. Ossian Sweet, the organizational maturation of the early civil rights movement, the rugged, violent, ethnic-based politics of Detroit in the 1920s, the Sweet trial itself---delivers the same contemporary truth in different ways: racism will not go quietly, if ever, because too many institutions and individuals depend on it for both self-esteem and profit. Boyle uses the 1925 murder trial of Sweet, his wife, and a dozen ot...

Everybody knows about the famous Brown versus Board of Education case (1954) where the Supreme Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. This book covers the earlier Sweet Trials of 1925 and 1926. Here the focus is instead housing/residential segregation. Ossian Sweet (1895 – 1960) was a black American physician who bought a home in a white residential area in Detroit, Michigan. Through armed self-defense he attempted to p...

A fine history of a case I knew absolutely nothing about, but now am off in search of more info. I recommend it very highly, but keep in mind that this is not a novel, but a history, and that as such, even though it moves quickly, there are times when the author doesn't go from point A to point B as in a novel but stops to present factors that led up to this period in time.The case in question begins in 1925 in Detroit, when Dr. Ossian Sweet and his wife move into a house that is outside the bou...

This book won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, and for good reason. I consider this to be the best example of historical storytelling I've read. The first part of the book is a riveting, meticulously researched account of an incident between an angry white mob and black physician Ossian Sweet, who recently purchased a home in a white neighborhood in 1920's Detroit. The second part of the book details the ensuing trial, led by legendary trial attorney (and my idol) Clarence Darrow. The eve...

Such an important book for understanding complex and often hidden parts of race relations in the USA. Boyle starts with the Civil War and the immediate aftermath when our national parties were the opposite of their stances today. The Republicans were for Civil Rights and "reconstructing" the renegade South. The Democrats were for conserving (isn't that a cute play on the word conservative) the idealized myth of life on the plantations with slaves and masters in loving relationships, economic sec...

Boyle may be an academic historian but he writes like a novelist. It takes a great story--African Americans asserting their rights and defending them with guns--and puts it into historical context. There are no saintly heroes in this book but real sometimes conflicted people.Basically it's about a young African American physician in Detroit in the early 1920s who wants to move out of his all-black overcrowded neighborhood and buys a house in a white neighborhood. After numerous threats and while...

It took me almost two months to finish this book. The subject was heartbreaking and interesting, but the writing style just never pulled me in. I learned so many new things while reading this. The one that I most hope to explore some more is about the lawyer Clarence Darrow. I hadn't heard of him before partly because it was so much before my time and mainly because I was never a law student. I imagine that he is often held up as an example to students studying law. I would love to read more abo...

Although there has been the criticism that this is a long laborious book that is exactly how the events in real life played out. Kevin Boyle does a fantastic job with his research and recreating history for the reader. Even though the final sentence of the denouement is utterly tragic it is a marvellous book. The background of the people primarily involved is laid bare and all of it well worth a read. No matter if for some it seems sluggish you won't be disappointed you started with this book an...

An extremely well-written book about the Ossian Sweet case, about which I knew nothing. Dr Sweet, an African-American, moved into a home in a white neighborhood of Detroit in 1925. A mob gathered to force him out. He and some friends fired into the mob, in self-defense, and killed a white man. They were arrested and tried for murder. Eventually, through the efforts of the NAACP, James Weldon Johnson, Clarence Darrow, and others, they were acquitted. Author Kevin Boyle told this story in a fascin...

This book is a non-fictional telling of the history of race relations in Detroit, which are only marginally better now than in the 1920's. Parts of it are as chilling as any piece of horror fiction, doubling the effect by knowing the truth of it. This is the story of what a devastating tool fear is and how it is so expertly used to control others. I think I will now always look at people in authority and ask myself "What method does he/she use to exert control?" If it is that he tries to make pe...

another book group choice. i feel naive that i didn't know that racial tensions in the city of Detroit went back to the 20s. this true tale of racial intolerance and housing segregation deepened my understanding of the issues which continue to face the D. The Ossian Sweet House still stands on the east side near where my grandmother's family used to reside. I drove by. When I finished the book and went to reread the quote in the front about the long arc of justice, I found the copy I was reading...

I was assigned this novel in my African-American History course at Augusta University and it quickly became one of those books that demanded a thorough rereading. This incredibly detailed recounting of a moment in history that is just shy of a 100 year anniversary must be read by those who want to learn from history...and not be doomed to repeat it. You are a black man in Detroit, 1925. You have just bought a house for your young family and on the second night five hundred angry people gather ou...

Arc of Justice is a non-fiction account of race relations in the 1920's. Times have changed, but many of the underlying factors remain. It follows a black man who was born in the south. Even though the family was desperately poor, he managed to attend college, and then med school. From med school he moved to Detroit where he attempted to purchase a home in a white neighborhood, which resulted in a riot, with one person killed. The defense in the resulting trial was led by Clarence Darrow.Even th...

This past month I read Arc of Justice by Kevin Boyle. In 1925 an African American doctor bought a house in an all-white Detroit neighborhood. At that time, the only housing available to people of color was in Black Bottom, a neighborhood built to house 5,000 people but by then holding 60,000. Dr. Ossian Sweet had seen a lynching as a boy, and knew about race riots that had erupted in towns across the US over racial integration of white neighborhoods. So Dr Sweet invited friends to his home for p...

The US cities shined in 1925. New York and Chicago, with more than two million residents each, were among the largest cities in the Western world, while Detroit, home to the new auto industry, was the States’ great boomtown.New York, Detroit, and Chicago bursted with cash in the mid-1920s. WWI had made the USA the world’s banker. Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and other American investment houses managed staggering sums and poured international wealth into the swelling stock market. Manufacturers p...

This was an interesting read that I picked up and put down a few times, before finally soldiering through to the end. The story is remarkable - 1920's urban racial prejudice on trial, featuring some of the most important names at that time in civil rights and in law - and the research is incredibly meticulous, one gets the sense that no stone was left unturned by the author. But at times that dense relaying of the research drags from being a rich, contextual experience to an inundation of trial

1925 Detroit. An African American doctor purchases a home in a white neighborhood just as the Ku Klux Klan is beginning a campaign to drive Blacks back into a tightly enclosed ghetto. A mob of several hundred forms. Rocks and bricks are thrown. Fearful for their lives, the Blacks shoot first above the crowd, then into it. One man is killed.The rest of the book consists of the court battle as all eleven people in the home are charged with murder, mini biographies of the people involved - the home...

This book was published in 2004 about an incident arising from segregation in 1925 Detroit.It is exceptional in context the author brought to the story. There is a great deal of history to be had, seamlessly told.As I completed the epilogue, however, I noted Kevin Boyle's assertion that the trajectory of racial tolerance continued to rise for the better in the decades that followed, although he did qualify the statement by acknowledging that there was more to accomplish. But who knew in 2004 whe...

A very good historical book. It traces the migration of African Americans from the south to the industrial north after the end of WWI. They believed that they were escaping “jim crow” laws in the south for a better life and jobs in the north. Sadly they encountered more segregation and violence in cities like Detroit and Chicago. The author does a very good job of detailing particular events in the city of Detroit with particular attention the attempts attempts by African Americans to move into

Kevin Boyle’s Arc of Justice is a limousine of a time machine that takes us back to late 19th/early 20th century America in a way I didn’t think possible. The reader doesn’t just get an incredibly in depth look at the fateful events of September 9th, 1925 on Garland Street and the subsequent trial that followed. Boyle masterfully winds back the clock to the civil war and presents a captivating but disturbing portrait of southern reconstruction, the horrors of Jim Crow, and neighborhood segregati...

I had never heard of this famous court case and am very glad I read this book. I am realizing more and more how much history is not taught in schools and how what was left out influenced my perceptions of this country. This book serves as a great reminder that although things have improved greatly in regards for equal rights, we still have a long way to go because laws matter only as much as the human heart endorses them.

In the trial of Dr. Ossian Sweet, historian Kevin Boyle found a story that encapsulates so much of the history of US race relations and traverses the major fault lines of early 20th century America. Boyle skillfully blends broader historical context, illuminating biographical details, and a dramatic court case that reads, at times, like a thrilling courtroom drama. I was struck by how many important figures had some some connection to this case (James Weldon Johnson, WEB Du Bois, Clarence Darrow...

An absolute must read!! This captivating novel quickly grabs and holds the readers attention while detailing the truth of American history, of Detroit’s history. I learned so much in this book. It should be a mandatory read for every Michigander.

Acting on behalf of the NAACP, James Weldon Johnson and Walter White hired Clarence Darrow to defend the Sweets. The defense team worked to find cracks in the testimony of the persecution witnesses and the police, who claimed that there wasn't a mob. This crack was accomplished when the two 13 year olds, George Suppus and Ulric Arthur took the stand. Ulric testified that stones were thrown at the Sweets home, resulting in broken windows before the shooting took place. Ossian's telling of his lif...

I thought this was a solid, if unspectacular book about a mostly-forgotten landmark trial concerning civil rights in America.Ossian Sweet was a child of the Jim Crow South at the beginning of the 20th century. After being sent away to be educated up north as a young boy, he ultimately became a doctor and settled in Detroit. He married, had a daughter, and then decided to move in to an all-white neighborhood. That's when the drama begins, as a mob threatened him and his family, leading to a deadl...

The National Book Award-winning nonfiction account of an African-American doctor (Dr. Ossian Sweet) who moves into a white neighborhood in Detroit in 1925, and the murder that occurs as a result of the white mob riot that tries to force out the doctor from the neighborhood. The book traces the history of Sweet and his family, as well as the larger history of segregation and racism that shaped not only Dr. Sweet and his reaction to the mob violence, but also shaped Detroit, the nation, and race r...

This was the Michigan Reads book for 2011. While it wasn't always a page-turner, I'm really glad I read it. The author, Kevin Boyle, is an historian with a keen eye for rich detail. He tells the story of Ossian Sweet - a young, talented and ambitious doctor living in Detroit in the mid-1920s. Sweet, the son of slaves, grew up in the south and made his way north during the Great Migration. He completed school, college and medical school before establishing a medical practice in Detroit. He and hi...

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 tr...

Okay, Shira, I finally read it. And I'm glad I did. Passed the copy you gave me on to a friend who runs Housing Opportunities Made Equal here in town. Interesting on development of housing segregation in tight housing markets and when you know that 30 years later the bulldozed Black Bottom to make Lafayette Park...Where I work now, Over-the-Rhine, is what happens without the bulldozer- a different set of housing battles.Kate- read this- this happened a few blocks from where you grew up. It inclu...