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

Jones, Rhett S.

Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age (New York: Henry Holt 2004)

WITH THE EXCEPTION of the pretentious word "saga" this book delivers every single thing its title promises, and is therefore highly recommended not only to historians, but to students of true crime, the law, courtroom drama, and fictional murder mysteries. Members of the first and the last of these categories are usually, for very different reasons, not much interested in true crime studies, but this is a first-rate one.

In Detroit in summer 1925 one man was killed and another wounded when a group of whites surrounded a home newly purchased by a black family. The whites threw stones and yelled what the media currently likes to describe as "racial epithets." Anticipating trouble, a small number of Detroit policemen were on the scene and working to keep this group from attacking the house. The word "group" is used here though, as Kevin Boyle makes clear, to the blacks in the house, blacks in Detroit, blacks in America, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP], this was a white mob, prepared to act as white mobs had acted in many other American cities during the period between the two world wars. They were going to attack and kill --lynching was the preferred method, but other means were acceptable--the blacks inside. The house had been purchased by Ossian Sweet, a medical doctor who sought a home for his wife, Gladys, and his infant daughter, Iva, outside the blighted ghetto to which Detroit's African American community was confined. As Boyle reveals him, Florida-born Sweet was both naive in his belief that working hard would entitle him to move his small family into a decent neighbourhood, and sophisticated because he expected white resistance. The group, or mob,--Boyle has written the kind of balanced book that forces the reader to decide--was then fired upon by one or more of a group of black men Sweet had assembled inside the house to protect his home. All these men were arrested and charged with murder. Much of the book examines how they came to be charged, social, legal, and political maneuverings by both sides, and the trials--there was more than one--in which the defence was led by none other than Clarence Darrow. Darrow was then the best-known attorney in the United States, a staunch liberal and aggressive public advocate of the Negro in the United States.

Though it runs to over 300 pages, Boyle's narrative is fast moving. Publishers' blurbs on the back of murder mysteries often warn readers not to begin if they have to get up early the next day as they will sleep beyond the alarm clock. Much the same claim can be made for Arc of Justice, as Boyle literally yanks readers out of one chapter and compels them to read the next. Despite its fast pace, the book includes many informative insights and asides.

In addition to the account of the events leading to the shootings, the trials, and their aftermath, Boyle also provides a number of interesting narratives. The early history of the NAACP, the role of the local chapter in Detroit, and the role of the national organization are explained and placed in context. The NAACP had before the Supreme Court of the United States a case that if decided in the organization's favour would have prevented racial covenants in the selling of homes. A home-owner would not have been able to place a restriction on his property to prevent it being sold to an African American. The NAACP feared that if the High Court failed to invalidate such restrictions, America's cities would become racially segregated. In the ideal NAACP world the Sweet case and the restrictive covenant issue would have been publicly resolved at the same time, with those charged found innocent and the Court eliminating the legal restrictions, each decision reinforcing the other. Boyle's intermittent accounts of events at the civil rights' organization's headquarters are therefore understandable. So are his accounts of the rise and fall of the Ku Klux Klan in Detroit.

Historians perhaps know more of the spread of the political power and racist actions of the Klan in Indiana than in any other northern state. So Arc of Justice makes a valuable contribution by tracing the development of the KKK in the Motor City. Boyle carefully laces the actions of the Invisible Empire in the commercial, ethnic, labour, and political context of the 1920s. He also provides an understanding of the press, pointing out, for example, that it was unable, or perhaps unwilling, to handle more than one African American major story at a time. So when a New Yorker from a prominent family sued his wife for divorce on the grounds that when he married her he had not known she was a Negress, the Sweet case got little attention. As the press saw it, the white public could handle only so much reading about blacks.

There are also mini-biographies scattered about the book. Some are told in one place and their subjects never re-appear, while others have their stories interrupted, only to be resumed pages later. These biographies include, but are not limited to, the judge in the case, the lawyers on both sides, significant NAACP personnel (whether or not they held formal office), politicians (honest and crooked), policemen (ditto), Klansmen, liberals (mostly white, but not exclusively so), ministers, and artists (mostly activists, but not always so). This is not an exhaustive list. Put together it offers a clear picture of social class, among both whites and blacks in the 1920s. And it reveals, as sociologists have long argued, that while knowledge of occupation, education, and income can tell a great deal about social class, they cannot tell all.

In addition to the main narrative, other narratives, and brief biographies, Arc of Justice also includes tidbits. For example, Wilberforce University, a private black college located in Ohio began its institutional life as a grand resort hotel, Tawawa Springs, used by southern planters and the female slaves whom they made their mistresses. When the resort went broke, the planters transformed it into a school for their mulatto children, but in the 1850s it was purchased by Ohio' s (white) Methodists and established as a college for free blacks. Boyle segues into this history of Wilberforce by way of giving background on Ossian Sweet, who earned his undergraduate degree there, and there is usually a good reason for introducing the tidbits in the book.

Tidbits, biographies, sub-narratives, and central narrative all rest on solid scholarship. The notes provide proof. They demonstrate Arc of Justice uses virtually every conceivable way of getting at the early 20th century and uses the ways well. Missing only are maps. A native of Detroit, Boyle knows his city and describes it well but a few maps of Motown, especially of the neighbourhood into which Sweet moved, would have been very useful. For the paperback edition, dump the photos and replace them with maps. History and geography remain married despite the attempts of sundry historians to push the divorce. Finally, and in the best murder mystery tradition, to uncover the ultimate fate of Ossian Sweet the last sentence on the last page of Arc of Justice must be read.

Rhett S. Jones

Brown University