Synopses & Reviews
This tautly told story steps back to a time when Detroit's boosters described their city as one of the most cosmopolitan in the world. It was also a city in which tensions between blacks and whites seemed manageable. Yet all that changed in 1925, when a black family named Sweet bought and moved into a house in a white neighborhood. What began with mothers bringing their children to gawk and stare soon became an angry mob of men, some of them from the local KKK, with stones.
The violence that ensued landed Ossian Sweet, a doctor from the "talented tenth," and others from his family in jail and compelled the NAACP -- which had taken up the Sweets' case -- to hire famed attorney Clarence Darrow, who had just finished defending the plaintiff in Tennessee v. John Scopes. Darrow's defense led to one of the most incendiary courtroom dramas in the history of the United States. The outcome was a triumph of cooperation that transcended race in the name of justice.
Synopsis
In the tradition of "Praying for Sheetrock," this account explores a forgotten chapter of American history and serves as a dramatic story of murder, mayhem, and the Klan.
Synopsis
While this story has the makings of a powerful legal thriller, it becomes much more in the hands of...Vine.
About the Author
Phyllis Vine is an American historian who has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the University of Michigan, Union College, and Barnard College. A graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism, she has written for The Nation, the Progressive, and Parents magazine. Her first book, Families in Pain, was groundbreaking in addressing the problems facing families of the mentally ill. Phyllis Vine lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.