Historical sleuth

National Book Award Winner Kevin Boyle describes himselfas an “archives rat” — and that’s a good thing for a historian and theauthor of the award-winning “Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, CivilRights and Murder in the Jazz Age.” It’s a gripping look at the 1925murder in Detroit of a white man by a black man and the ensuing trialthat garnered national attention and helped set the stage for thenascent civil rights movement.

Boyle, who will visit Lansing as part of Michigan’s GreatRead program on Oct. 25, will be just a few blocks from the State ofMichigan Archives where he did some important research. “Arc” won theNational Book Award in 2004 for non-fiction.

The author said he will tell the audience about some of the interesting finds he made on his way to writing the book.

“Arc” is the story of Detroit physician Ossian(pronounced ocean) Sweet and his family, who set off a cascade ofevents when they became some of the first blacks to move into anall-white Detroit neighborhood in 1925. The times were tense as thecity faced an influx of Southern blacks moving to Detroit as part ofthe “great migration.” 

When a mob of protesters pelted the Sweet home withstones, someone from inside the home fired shots into the crowd,killing one man and wounding another. Sweet and 10 of his family andfriends were arrested on suspicion of murder.

Boyle — who was raised in Detroit, studied at Universityof Detroit and University of Michigan and teaches at Ohio StateUniversity — is more than an historian. He is a great storyteller whocan mesmerize you with the nuanced retelling of a trial whose outcomecan be easily found on Wikipedia. “Guilty” or “not guilty” becomessecondary.

His research is impeccable, likely due to his studyingunder the legendary U-M history Professor Sydney Fine, who wrote theseminal history of the Detroit Riots. “Violence in the Model City.” anda three-volume history of one of Michigan’s most illustrious publicfigures, Gov. Frank Murphy. 

During his graduate studies with Fine, a little of FrankMurphy’s history may have rubbed off on Boyle. Murphy was the presidingjudge at the Sweet Trial and would go on to become governor of Michiganand an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.

The trial, the dynamic and bustling city, the menacingpresence of the Ku Klux Klan and the issues of race alone would makethe murder worthy of a book, but when crusading attorney ClarenceDarrow entered the case he elevated the trial to national attention.Darrow had already made a name for himself in the infamous ScopesMonkey Trial and numerous other high-profile cases typically involvingthe rights of the underdog.

“He gave enormous life to the story,” Boyle said. “Hedoesn’t show up in the book until chapter eight, and then the bookreally takes off.” 

Boyle said the flamboyant Darrow was a “mess of contradiction,” showing the complexity of human life. 

“He liked to get people pissed. He liked to poke people with a sharpened stick, and if he got it in the eye, all the better.”

Darrow, as the book shows, pokes plenty of sharp sticks at institutionalized racism while in Detroit defending Sweet.

“Arc” is a book that is more than just about a landmarktrial. In Boyle’s deft hands it becomes the retelling of the firstsparks of segregation and the separate-but-unequal divisions thatcontinue in our communities.

Boyle believes that America and racerelations have come far since the Sweet trial, but he offers the caveatthat segregation by location is still in place. “One enduring form ofsegregation is housing. Our American cities and suburbs are deeplydivided.” 

Boyle writes in the discussion guide: “Ilike to think that Sweet’s story makes us look around us — and wonderwhy we continue to accept such injustice.”

That the Michigan HumanitiesCouncil selected “Arc” for the Great Read Program (full disclosure: Theauthor of this article served on the selection committee) was anunusual decision since race is not something that Americans arecomfortable talking about.

The idea of a statewide reading program is to get peopletalking. Boyle is making six stops (Alpena, Marquette, Grand Rapids,Flint, Detroit and Lansing).

In his book, Boyle indirectly makes the case for theimportance of preserving history. While researching the Sweet family inthe National Archives, he was able to trace them to their slaveancestors. In Lansing, he uncovered details about Sweet’s marriage andhis medical licensing; playing history detective, he was able torecover some records that were thought long lost.

 For historygeeks that in itself is an interesting story. Boyle wanted the policerecords from the night of the murder and the arrest of the Sweetcontingent, but learned they had been thrown out. 

While interviewing Michigan playwright Arthur Beer, whowrote “Malice Aforethought” on the Sweet trial for the MichiganSesquicentennial in 1987, Boyle discovered that Beer had copied somepolice records. Beer, who had stored them in his basement, recoveredthem and mailed them to Boyle. Inside were the complete interrogationtranscripts of the alleged murderers.

Boyle said these primary records, which were fromconversations only two or three hours after the killing, allowed “all11 of them (arrestees) to become real people.You can’t top thatexperience — they give the book a lot more experience.”

What Boyle calls luck was actually the dogged efforts ofa trained historian, who learned from the best: Sydney Fine. Fine’slegacy, Boyle said was “getting it right.”

Finally, Boyle said, he wrote the book for his father,who reviewed the book as Boyle was writing it. He describes his fatheras a great reader but not an academic man. 

“It sounds hokey but true,” Boyle said; he pictured hisfather reading before bedtime, getting ready to turn off the light, butsaying to himself, “I’ve got to finish this first.”

Whether it was Fine, Boyle or his father who spurred theeffort, “Arc” pulls you into the compelling story and leaves youpondering a question about race in America and where we stand today.

Kevin Boyle

Part of Michigan’s Great Read Program 

6 p.m. Oct. 25 Cooley Law School, 300 S. Capitol Ave.

Free

www.cadl.org/news/GreatMichiganRead