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 2004 book by historian Kevin Boyle, published by Henry Holt. The book chronicles racism in Detroit during the 1920s Jazz Age through the lens of Ossian Sweet, an African American doctor who moves to Detroit during the great migration. While living in Detroit he eventually moves out of the ghetto and he and his wife move into an all-white middle-class neighborhood. When racist whites attack the Sweets' home, a white man is killed. Sweet and his family are persecuted by the legal system. The book won the 2004 National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for History.