Arc of Justice: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

As soon as James Weldon Johnson, the executive secretary of the NAACP, sees the Sweets’ story in the newspapers, he grasps its potential. Even in the North, segregation and racial violence—especially in terms of restrictive housing policies—are increasing.

Johnson is a remarkable man. Poised, elegant, and politic, his pride and carriage developed out of a sheltered and privileged childhood in a prosperous Black middle-class family. From this foundation, he went on to establish the nation’s first Black daily newspaper, become the first Black lawyer admitted to the Florida bar, founded Florida’s first Black high school, and wrote popular musicals, songs, poetry, and an autobiography. President Theodore Roosevelt granted him a consular appointment, sending Johnson as an American representative to Venezuela and Nicaragua. Now, as the NAACP’s first Black executive secretary, he interfaces between the primarily white board of directors and prominent Black members like W. E. B. Du Bois.

The Sweets’ case exemplifies increasing housing segregation, especially in the North. Even Johnson’s beloved Harlem neighborhood owes its existence to housing discrimination. The NAACP has been mounting legal challenges to segregated housing for several years, including a successful Supreme Court challenge of exclusionary laws in Louisville, Kentucky. At the time of the Garland Avenue shooting, the NAACP has another challenge—based in Washington, D.C.—winding its way to the Supreme Court. These legal actions are expensive, and Johnson needs to raise funds. A case like the Sweets’ could galvanize national donations, and it could convince white people from less-desirable ethnic minorities—who face similar discrimination—to join the fight.

But Johnson’s fundraising efforts face an uphill battle: the white press largely ignores the NAACP, and Black communities aren’t paying much more attention. But Johnson pays attention, especially to Detroit, where Alexander Turner, Vollington Bristol, and the Fletcher family have recently faced violent expulsion from their homes. Johnson plans to visit Detroit later in the fall. Meanwhile, the Sweets’ case comes to his attention and he dispatches his protégé, Walter White, to the Motor City.

When Walter White isn’t occupied with his work as Johnson’s second-in-command at the NAACP, he rubs elbows with American literary elites. Although he is mixed race and therefore considered “a Negro” by the racial standards of the day, the light-skinned, blue-eyed Walter White easily passes for Caucasian—when he wants to. In principle, White embraces his mixed heritage and despises racialized hatred, but in practice he prefers the company of white people and admits, in private, to distrusting “pure Negro[s].” Still, his passion—and his ability to “pass” while investigating lynchings and other crimes on behalf of the NAACP—make him an indispensable member of the organization and positions him to help usher in the literary movement later known as the Harlem Renaissance. His own debut novel, The Fire in the Flint, published in 1923, becomes an instant success.

The dynamic White arrives in Detroit about a week after the shootings, determined to shape up the case as quickly as possible so he can get back to New York for a weekend of parties. But conflict quickly arises. To avoid further inflaming the racial divisions in the city, the NAACP executive board wants a white defense lawyer. But the current attorneys balk at the idea. They fear that such a move will alienate the city’s Black population and cut off its financial support for the Sweets’ cause. White counters that the case has national ramifications and that a white lawyer could sway the opinions of white Detroiters who currently believe the Sweets guilty. White writes a letter to Johnson criticizing the trio of lawyers. He writes particularly harshly about Cecil Rowlette, who happens to be dark-skinned and the son of a formerly enslaved person.

White attends the preliminary hearing, where Assistant Prosecutor Lester Moll sidesteps the issue of forethought (for which he has no evidence) and instead focuses on the technicalities of crowd size and antagonism. Carefully selected witnesses describe a small, non-threatening crowd. Moll seems to intend to prove the shootings disproportionate to the situation and convict the Sweets and their compatriots of conspiracy by implication. The defense attorneys, especially Rowlette, do their best to poke holes in the witnesses’ testimony. But, despite this and Moll’s failure to explicitly tie any of the suspects to Leon Breiner’s murder, the judge finds the evidence sufficient to proceed to trial.

White uses this blow to revisit the idea of adding a white defense lawyer, but Rowlette’s terms—that he and his co-counsels remain involved and that no other than Thomas Chawke, Detroit’s most famous defense lawyer be allowed to join them—infuriate White. Chawke, known for defending mobsters, will give the case (which needs to be “a drama of injustice fairly fought”) the wrong appearance for the national stage.

While Walter White fumes over Rowlette’s impertinence, James Johnson starts fundraising. News of the Sweets’ arrest spreads through the national Black press, carefully spun by the NAACP and connected to their ongoing Supreme Court challenge. Stories emphasize Ossian’s injured pride and the suffering of the young couple, unjustly separated from their daughter and thrown in jail. And they raise the specter of Jim Crow segregation encroaching on Northern Black communities. But donations fail to meet expectations. More distressingly, the organization not only fails to gain traction with white audiences, but signs appear that liberal white people increasingly favor segregation. Johnson knows that white people must feel the sting of the case personally before it can cut through the color line.

In the week following White’s visit to Detroit, Julian Perry tells the local NAACP branch that he wants to resign to make way for a white lawyer. But news of White’s pressure campaign on the defense team provokes a backlash from the Black Bottom community, which begins raising a separate defense fund “uncontrolled by outside politics.” Newly empowered, Cecil Rowlette remains in control of the case through the arraignment hearing.

While the suspects await the arraignment hearing, they receive visitors, including Henry Sweet, Sr., who travels all the way from Florida to visit his three sons. When Otis apologizes for embarrassing the family, Henry says he has nothing to be embarrassed about because “[o]nly rabbits run.” Perhaps heartened by these words of approval, Otis joins Charles Washington, Leonard Morse, and William Davis in appealing to the NAACP to assume control of a case that has ramifications for the “inalienable rights under the Constitution” of all Black citizens. White tasks Perry with visiting the white lawyers on the NAACP’s list, but each one declines to join the defense. The political situation—everyone expects the Klan’s candidate to do well in the upcoming mayoral election—makes the proposition too risky. Only Chawke expresses willingness—for an unbearably high fee.

Thus, Rowlette remains in control of the case on the day of the arraignment hearing. Witness testimony at the preliminary hearing had foreclosed his opportunity to present a self-defense argument, which he used successfully with the Fleta Mathies case. Instead, he attacks the Prosecution’s flimsy case: their murder charges make no sense without an identifiable murder or compelling evidence of conspiracy. Justice demands that the Sweets and their friends be released. Although Frank Murphy carefully considers Rowlette’s motion to dismiss, his instinct for political preservation overrides blind justice. The trial of The People v. Sweet will proceed. The next day, Klan candidates sweep the city primary, even in the city’s eastern, working class, and ethnic minority wards.

At NAACP headquarters, a letter arrives from the chief counsel of the Chicago Defender. Because the case interests him, he offers any help he can—including the knowledge of great lawyers like Mr. Clarence Darrow. Twelve days before the trial begins, someone in the NAACP realizes the potential of this offer. Clarence Darrow is the most famous and brilliant defense lawyer in the country, and his involvement has the chance to change the trajectory of the Sweets’ story.