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

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.





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