Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age tells the gripping true story of one of the most explosive court cases of the 1920s and its impact on the struggle for racial equality in America.
In 1925 Detroit, physician Ossian Sweet, the grandson of a slave, moves his family into a home in a white neighbourhood, determined to claim his share of the American middle-class dream. As racial tensions rise and the Ku Klux Klan gains influence, a hostile crowd gathers outside the Sweets’ house. When shots are fired and a white man is killed, Sweet and his supporters are charged with murder.
The ensuing trial draws legendary defence attorney Clarence Darrow and becomes a national test of whether Black families can live where they choose without fear. Blending police investigation, courtroom drama, and social history, this book traces the Sweet family’s journey from slavery and the Great Migration to the fragile promise of security in the North.
Ideal for readers of narrative history, legal drama, and civil rights studies, it offers a richly detailed portrait of Jazz Age Detroit and a pivotal moment in the fight against segregation and racial violence.
