Let’s Talk About It – Arc of Justice (October 6, 2022)
The third Let’s Talk About It program will be held on Thursday, October 6, 2022, from 6:30-8:30 p.m. in the Library’s meeting room. Several copies of the book are available for checkout. Below is some information about the book and the speaker for September.
About the Book
In 1925, Detroit was a smoky swirl of jazz and speakeasies, assembly lines and fistfights. The advent of automobiles had brought workers from around the globe to compete for manufacturing jobs, and tensions often flared with the KKK in ascendance and violence rising. Ossian Sweet, a proud Negro doctor-grandson of a slave-had made the long climb from the ghetto to a home of his own in a previously all-white neighborhood. Yet just after his arrival, a mob gathered outside his house; suddenly, shots rang out: Sweet, or one of his defenders, had accidentally killed one of the whites threatening their lives and homes. And so it began-a chain of events that brought America’s greatest attorney, Clarence Darrow, into the fray and transformed Sweet into a controversial symbol of equality. Historian Kevin Boyle weaves the police investigation and courtroom drama of Sweet’s murder trial into an unforgettable tapestry of narrative history that documents the volatile America of the 1920s and movingly re-creates the Sweet family’s journey from slavery through the Great Migration to the middle class. Ossian Sweet’s story, so richly and poignantly captured here, is an epic tale of one man trapped by the battles of his era’s changing times. Arc of Justice is the winner of the 2004 National Book Award for Nonfiction.
(Summary from amazon.com).
About the Speaker
Teaching has been the passion of Professor Lloyd K. Musselman, who, after receiving his Ph.D. degree, came to Oklahoma City University in 1969 and has taught there ever since. An historian by trade, Professor Musselman has inspired students in all majors to seek the full development of their interests. In recognition of his teaching skills, Dr. Musselman was appointed the Darbeth-Whitten Professor of American History in 1978, presented the Sears Roebuck Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence in 1990, and named the school’s Distinguished Teacher of the Year in 2002. As part of a survey Oklahoma City University made of its past graduates, responders consistently named Dr. Musselman as one of the teachers who inspired them, including a former national social studies teacher of the year. Lloyd Musselman has also served as Department Chair, the Director of the Robert A. Taft Institute of Government, and the Acting Dean of the Petree College of Arts and Sciences. He has been notable for enriching the cultural life of the state by his participation in the Oklahoma Humanities Council and the Let’s Talk About It program sponsored by the Oklahoma Libraries Association.