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

Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age is a work of narrative history by Kevin Boyle. In 1925, Detroit was a booming industrial city drawing workers from around the world, and racial tensions were high as the Ku Klux Klan gained strength. Ossian Sweet, a Black physician and the grandson of a man born into slavery, bought a house in an all-white neighborhood. Soon after he moved in, a hostile crowd gathered outside, shots were fired from the house, and a white man was killed. Sweet, his family and friends were charged with murder, and the famous attorney Clarence Darrow took up their defense. Boyle weaves together the police investigation and the courtroom drama with the Sweet family's journey from slavery through the Great Migration, showing how the case became a landmark in the fight for civil rights. It won the 2004 National Book Award for Nonfiction.