One Man's Castle, by Phyllis Vine. I figure I should strike while the iron's not cold and write about another of my recent reads. One Man's Castle chronicles an event not often discussed in civil rights discussions: Dr.Ossian Sweet's fight for his right to live whereever the hell he chooses. It was 1925, not long after the exodus of blacks from the south to the "more tolerant" north. Dr. Sweet and his wife bought a house in a white Detroit neighborhood. Basically the day he moved in an angry white mob showed, threatened him and his family, ultimately resulting in the death of a white man, presumably at the hands of someone in the house. All eleven in the house were tried for murder. Clarence Darrow took the case on behalf of the still new NAACP and was brilliant in the Sweets' defense.
Darrow is at once a reason to become a lawyer and a reason to find something else to do for a living. The man fought for the downtrodden, making impassioned well-reasoned arguments for those who faced overwhelming odds. You learn about that and you think, "hey, being a lawyer would be great." The man was also brilliant, seeing nuances where others could not and sustaining an unparalleled love of the law that nobody else could. In the original Sweet trial, Darrow made an eight hour closing argument. Eight hours. (You can read a transcript and all about the trial at UMKC's excellent website (great stuff about all the well-known civil rights cases)). Reading that closing argument and reading what it took out of Darrow encourages most mortals to avoid the law -- one cannot aspire to his career; he was smarter than us all.
As a whole, the book was excellent. It started off slowly and wasn't until over halfway complete when the trial actually started. But, the beginning was interesting enough, the middle took off, and the ending was captivating. If you're interested in the pre-civil rights movement (what has come to be known as the civil rights movement in America), then you'd like Phyllis Vine's work here.
P.S. Last year I read The Story of My Life, by Clarence Darrow. If I come across as a bit of a Darrow groupie, it's probably because of that.
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