Description
She was Black.
She was a woman.
She was a prosecutor.
She was a graduate of Smith College.
She was the granddaughter of enslaved people.
But, as dazzlingly unlikely a combination as one could imagine in the New York of the 1930s – without the strategy she devised, Lucky Luciano, the most powerful Mafia boss in history, would never have been convicted.
When special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey selected twenty lawyers to help him clean up the city’s underworld, she was the only member of his team who was not a White male.
Eunice Hunton Carter was her name.
Carter was raised in a world of stultifying expectations about race and gender, yet by the 1940s, her professional and political successes had made her one of the most famous Black women in America. But her triumphs were shadowed by prejudice and tragedy. Gently complicating her rise was her difficult relationship with her younger brother, Alphaeus, and avowed Communist who – together with his friend Dashiell Hammett – would go to prison during the McCarthy era. Still, she remained unbowed.
As moving, haunting, and fast-paced as a novel, Invisible tells the true story of a woman who often found her path blocked by the social and political expectations of her time. But Eunice Carter never accepted defeat, and thanks to her grandson’s remarkable book, her long-forgotten story is once again visible.
About the Author
Stephen L. Carter is the bestselling author of over five novels―including The Emperor of Ocean Park and New England White―as well as more than half a dozen works of non-fiction. Formerly a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, he is now the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale University, where he has taught for thirty years plus. He and his wife are currently living in Connecticut.
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