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Invisible : the forgotten story of the black woman lawyer who took down America's most powerful mobster Cover Image

Invisible : the forgotten story of the black woman lawyer who took down America's most powerful mobster / Stephen L. Carter.

Carter, Stephen L., 1954- (author.).

Summary:

She was black and a woman and a prosecutor, a graduate of Smith College and the granddaughter of slaves, as dazzlingly unlikely a combination as one could imagine in the New York of the 1930s--and 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, Stephen Carter's grandmother, 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. Greatly complicating her rise was her difficult relationship with her younger brother, Alphaeus, an avowed Communist who--together with his friend Dashiell Hammett--would go to prison during the McCarthy era. Yet she remained unbowed. Moving, haunting, and as fast paced as a novel, [this book] 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.

Record details

ISBN: 9781250121974
ISBN: 1250121973
ISBN: 9781250230669
Physical Description: xviii, 364 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: New York, New York : Henry Holt and Company, 2018.
Copyright: ©2018

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references (pages 283-350) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Prologue -- Part 1: Inheritance. The burning -- The legacy -- The student -- The Czarina -- The escape -- The candidate -- The commission -- The prosecutor -- The premise -- The raiders -- The preparation -- The trial -- The visitor -- The politco -- Part II: Passion. The celebrity -- The decision -- The file -- The connections -- The defeat -- The breakup -- The reinvention -- The siblings.