Kevin Boyle, a professor of history at Ohio State University, is
the author of "The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism,
1945-1968." A former associate professor at the University of
Massachusetts, he is also the recipient of fellowships from the
Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities,
and the American Council of Learned Societies.
He lives in Bexley, Ohio.
"Dr. Ossian Sweet bought a house in a white neighborhood in 1925.
Detroit exploded as a result, and a largely forgotten, yet pivotal,
civil rights moment in modern American history unfolded. Kevin
Boyle's vivid, deeply researched Arc of Justice is a powerful
document that reads like a Greek tragedy in black and white. The
lessons in liberty and law to be learned from it are color
blind."
--David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of W. E.
B. Du Bois
""Arc of Justice" perfectly illustrates why W.E.B. Du Bois insisted
that a keen sense of drama and tragedy is the ally, not the enemy,
of clear-eyed historical analysis of race in U.S. history. By turns
a crime story and a gripping courtroom drama, a family tale and a
stirring account of resistance, an evocation of American dreams and
a narration of American violence, Boyle's study takes us to the
heart of interior lives and racist social processes at a key
juncture in U.S. history.
--David Roediger, Babcock Professor of African American Studies and
History, University of Illinois, author of "Colored White:
Transcending the Racial Past"
"What a powerful and beautiful book! Kevin Boyle has done a great
service to history with "Arc of Justice. "With deep research and
graceful prose, he has taken a single moment, the hot September day
in 1925 when Ossian and Gladys Sweet moved into a bungalow on
Garland Avenue in Detroit, and from that woven an amazing and
unforgettable story of prejudice and justice at the dawn of
America's racial awakening."
--David Maraniss, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of "They
Marched Into Sunlight and When Pride Still Mattered"
"There are many hidden and semi-hidden and half-forgotten markers
of the civil rights movement. Kevin Boyle's careful, detailed study
of a 1925 murder trial in Detroit is one such precursing marker.
"Arc of Justice "is a necessary contribution to what seems like an
insoluble moral dilemma: race in America."
--Paul Hendrickson, author of "Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race
and Its Legacy"
"A welcome book on an important case. In Kevin Boyle's evocative
account, the civil rights saga of Gladys and Ossian Sweet finally
has the home it has long deserved."
--Philip Dray, author of "At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The
Lynching of Black America"
""Arc of Justice" is one of the most engrossing books I have ever
read. It is, at once, a poignant biography, a tour-de-force of
historical detective work, a gripping courtroom drama, and a
powerful reflection on race relations in America. Better than any
historian to date, Kevin Boyle captures the tensions of the Jazz
Age: a period that witnessed the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan and
the flowering of the Harlem Renaissance; the clampdown on
immigration and the emergence of an ethnic insurgency; the
crystallization of racial segregation both north and south and the
rise of the modern civil rights movement. The troubled and exciting
history of America in the 1920s comes alive in his vivid portraits
of striving black physician Ossian Sweet, charged with murder;
Sweet's brilliant legal team led by the incomparable Clarence
Darrow; his tireless advocates James Weldon Johnson and Walter
White; and trial judge and future Supreme Court justice Frank
Murphy. "Arc of Justice" is a masterpiece."
--Thomas J. Sugrue, Bicentennial Class of 1940 Professor of
History, University of Pennsylvania, author of the Bancroft
Prize-winning, "Origins of the Urban Crisis"
“Dr. Ossian Sweet bought a house in a white neighborhood in 1925.
Detroit exploded as a result, and a largely forgotten, yet pivotal,
civil rights moment in modern American history unfolded. Kevin
Boyle's vivid, deeply researched Arc of Justice is a powerful
document that reads like a Greek tragedy in black and white. The
lessons in liberty and law to be learned from it are color
blind.”
—David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of W. E.
B. Du Bois
""Arc of Justice" perfectly illustrates why W.E.B. Du Bois insisted
that a keen sense of drama and tragedy is the ally, not the enemy,
of clear-eyed historical analysis of race in U.S. history. By turns
a crime story and a gripping courtroom drama, a family tale and a
stirring account of resistance, an evocation of American dreams and
a narration of American violence, Boyle's study takes us to the
heart of interior lives and racist social processes at a key
juncture in U.S. history.
—David Roe
" Dr. Ossian Sweet bought a house in a white neighborhood in 1925.
Detroit exploded as a result, and a largely forgotten, yet pivotal,
civil rights moment in modern American history unfolded. Kevin
Boyle's vivid, deeply researched Arc of Justice is a powerful
document that reads like a Greek tragedy in black and white. The
lessons in liberty and law to be learned from it are color
blind."
-- David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of W. E.
B. Du Bois
""Arc of Justice" perfectly illustrates why W.E.B. Du Bois insisted
that a keen sense of drama and tragedy is the ally, not the enemy,
of clear-eyed historical analysis of race in U.S. history. By turns
a crime story and a gripping courtroom drama, a family tale and a
stirring account of resistance, an evocation of American dreams and
a narration of American violence, Boyle's study takes us to the
heart of interior lives and racist social processes at a key
juncture in U.S. history.
-- David Roediger, Babcock Professor of African American Studies
and History, University of Illinois, author of "Colored White:
Transcending the Racial Past"
" What a powerful and beautiful book! Kevin Boyle has done a great
service to history with "Arc of Justice. "With deep research and
graceful prose, he has taken a single moment, the hot September day
in 1925 when Ossian and Gladys Sweet moved into a bungalow on
Garland Avenue in Detroit, and from that woven an amazing and
unforgettable story of prejudice and justice at the dawn of
America's racial awakening."
-- David Maraniss, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of "They
Marched Into Sunlight and When Pride Still Mattered"
" There are many hidden and semi-hidden and half-forgotten markers
of the civil rights movement. Kevin Boyle's careful, detailed study
of a 1925 murder trial in Detroit is one such precursing marker.
"Arc of Justice "is a necessary contribution to what seems like an
insoluble moral dilemma: race in America."
-- Paul Hendrickson, author of "Sons of Mississippi: A Story of
Race and Its Legacy"
" A welcome book on an important case. In Kevin Boyle's evocative
account, the civil rights saga of Gladys and Ossian Sweet finally
has the home it has long deserved."
-- Philip Dray, author of "At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The
Lynching of Black America"
" "Arc of Justice" is one of the most engrossing books I have ever
read. It is, at once, a poignant biography, a tour-de-force of
historical detective work, a gripping courtroom drama, and a
powerful reflection on race relations in America. Better than any
historian to date, Kevin Boyle captures the tensions of the Jazz
Age: a period that witnessed the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan and
the flowering of the Harlem Renaissance; the clampdown on
immigration and the emergence of an ethnic insurgency; the
crystallization of racial segregation both north and south and the
rise of the modern civil rights movement. The troubled and exciting
history of America in the 1920s comes alive in his vivid portraits
of striving black physician Ossian Sweet, charged with murder;
Sweet's brilliant legal team led by the incomparable Clarence
Darrow; his tireless advocates James Weldon Johnson and Walter
White; and trial judge and future Supreme Court justice Frank
Murphy. "Arc of Justice" is amasterpiece."
-- Thomas J. Sugrue, Bicentennial Class of 1940 Professor of
History, University of Pennsylvania, author of the Bancroft
Prize-winning, "Origins of the Urban Crisis"
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