First of two parts
Stephen L. Carter, a bestselling author, delves into his past and discovers the inspiring story of his grandmother’s extraordinary life which he shares in his new edition entitled: “Invisible.”
The following review was found on Amazon:
Carter writes: “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 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 20 lawyers to help him clean up the city’s underworld, she was the only member of his team who was not a white male.”
The book promo: “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 (in the 1950s). Yet, she remained unbowed.
“Moving, haunting, and as 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.”
September 15, 2018:
Angie Boyter writes: “I have been a fan of Stephen L. Carter’s suspense novels about black lawyers since The Emperor of Ocean Park, so when I read that he had written a book about his grandmother’s career as a lawyer fighting The Mob in the 1930s my first reaction was “Here is a real-life story that could be as exciting as his fiction. “The opening paragraph confirmed this feeling: ‘The raids were set for 9 p.m.. So secret were the targets that the one 160 New York City police officers involved were not allowed to see their orders until five minutes before the hour.’ I was ready for the action!
“However, both the tone and the timeline were then reset, and the story of Eunice Carter’s investigation and prosecution of mobsters was put on hold until about a third of the way through the book.
“Instead, Carter takes us back to the Civil War and his family’s experiences of slavery and freedom and the roller coaster of success and discrimination ridden by what Carter termed Negro ‘sassiety’ (and women of all ethnicities) up through the (1930s) Depression Era. I found it very interesting, especially New York politics during the 1920s and 1930s, but a reader who has been primed by the book jacket and the opening paragraph for reading about The Mafia could not be blamed for feeling a bit let down.
“Once it begins, though, the story of Eunice Carter’s role in bringing down mobsters like Lucky Luciano and Tammany Hall boss Jimmy Hines reads like a good legal thriller. It was not surprising that the recognition she achieved from those successes led to her becoming ‘one of the most prominent colored Republicans in the country’ in the early years of WW II, and the political battles she witnessed and participated in were as interesting as the crime-fighting. She seems to have known every prominent Negro American of the day, from Richard Wright to Thurgood Marshall, and most of the white ones, perhaps most notably Thomas Dewey and Eleanor Roosevelt. ‘Invisible’ is as much a history of Depression life, World War II, and the rise of and response to communism as it is biography.
“The Eunice Hunton Carter I met in ‘Invisible’ was a remarkable and complex person who overcame tremendous obstacles and achieved great successes. I admired her tremendously, and I felt sorry for her, but I found it difficult to like her very much as a person. Stephen Carter repeatedly emphasized his family’s belief in the importance of stable families and the wife’s duty to set a good example, but Eunice’s own choices were often not ones that would exemplify traditional family mores, especially with respect to caring for her child. I saw a lot of commitment to causes in Eunice Carter; I did not see a lot of love.”
Stephen L. Carter is a novelist and professor of law at Yale University.
Continued next week