Customer Reviews (1)

Can't breed 'em without it.
While the questions are numerous and certainly could be multiplied, the possibilities of advance are far greater than any number of questions could ever imply. This, however, is not meant to intimidate the breeders of strawberries.

Enough said. ... Read more

Product Description
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.
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Customer Reviews (42)

Courtesy of US History from 1877
"Arc of Justice:A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age" depicts the life of one Ossian Sweet from his childhood in the Jim Crow South to his endeavors in the city of Detroit where racial tensions were at a peak in the 1920s.The story begins by keeping you on the edge of your seat as Sweet moved into his new home with his wife and child, accompanied by a band of friends whom open fire onto an angry mob.Excitement and suspense quell as the story continues and ultimately ends in the upmost tragedy when Sweet unexpectedly takes his life during the 1960s Civil Rights movement.Author Kevin Boyle accurately portrays the hardship of African Americans during the Jazz Age, though the manner in which he does so does not keep the attention of the reader throughout the duration of the novel.Court proceedings and other events are drawn out much longer than necessary with more background information than anything else.The facts and main points of the book are valid which makes "Arc of Justice..." a valuable source for an inside look at an era marked by the contrasting factors of hope and opportunity versus fear and violence.

A must read!
Not often you read a non-fiction that is so wonderfully researched and that reads like an interesting and intriguing novel - with repercussions that are still germane today - I loved it and recommend it to everyone!

well-researched bit of history
I finished this book on MLK Day. How appropriate. This book is written by a historian and gives great details about 11 blacks charged with killing a white manwhile defending their home from an angry white mob. The whites were enraged because the blacks moved into "their" neighborhood. I thought it was interesting, and learned a great deal about Jim Crow in the North even in the 1920's. Justice wins out, though it took a while.

Arc of Justice
Arc of Justice a great book if you are looking for the truth. Kevin Boyle holds no puches, insightful, honest and brutal. Realistic and a page turner.

Justice is Done
Writing with a novelist's flair, the author expertly assembled a story about Dr. Ossian Sweet who just wants to live in a modest bungalow home in 1925 in an area of Detroit where blacks do not live.Dr. Sweet overcame great odds (he was urged to leave home at 13-years-old because his parents had to continue to feed a growing brood of children) to become a physician.The story is full in historical nuggets about which I loved learning.It's full of drama and suspense, and you will not want to put down the book.

It's an excellent read that you will likely enjoy. ... Read more