Eunice Hunton Carter
A Lifelong Fight for Social Justice
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2022 PROSE Awards Category Winner - Biography & Autobiography
Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards - 2021 BRONZE Winner for Biography
The fascinating biography of Eunice Hunton Carter, a social justice and civil rights trailblazer and the only woman prosecutor on the Luciano trial
Eunice Hunton Carter rose to public prominence in 1936 as both the only woman and the only person of color on Thomas Dewey’s famous gangbuster team that prosecuted mobster Lucky Luciano. But her life before and after the trial remains relatively unknown. In this definitive biography on this trailblazing social justice activist, authors Marilyn S. Greenwald and Yun Li tell the story of this unknown but critical pioneer in the struggle for racial and gender equality in the twentieth century.
Carter worked harder than most men because of her race and gender, and Greenwald and Li reflect on her lifelong commitment to her adopted home of Harlem, where she was viewed as a role model, arts patron, community organizer, and, later, as a legal advisor to the United Nations, the National Council of Negro Women, and several other national and global organizations.
Carter was both a witness to and a participant in many pivotal events of the early and mid– twentieth century, including the Harlem riot of 1935 and the social scene during the Harlem Renaissance.
Using transcripts, letters, and other primary and secondary sources from several archives in the United States and Canada, the authors paint a colorful portrait of how Eunice continued the legacy of the Carter family, which valued education, perseverance, and hard work: a grandfather who was a slave who bought his freedom and became a successful businessman in a small colony of former slaves in Ontario, Canada; a father who nearly single-handedly integrated the nation’s YMCAs in the Jim Crow South; and a mother who provided aid to Black soldiers in France during World War I and who became a leader in several global and domestic racial equality causes.
Carter’s inspirational multi-decade career working in an environment of bias, segregation, and patriarchy in Depression-era America helped pave the way for those who came after her.
In Eunice Hunton Carter: A Lifelong Fight for Social Justice, Greenwald and Li do the immense, important work of balancing the American narrative. In this riveting examination of Carter’s life, readers are introduced to an unsung heroine of modern American history. Beginning with her family roots steeped in the struggle for black equality and moving to Carter’s groundbreaking contributions to the infamous mob trial of Charles “Lucky” Luciano, the authors elevate Eunice Hunton Carter to her rightful place in the American story. We know the names of Ida B. Wells, Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Shirley Chisholm, and so many other freedom fighters. Now, thanks to Greenwald and Li, we can add Eunice Hunton Carter to that illustrious number.---Kristie Robin Johnson, author of High Cotton
Eunice Hunton Carter: A Lifelong Fight for Social Justice is a compelling biography of the only African American and only woman on Tom Dewey’s famous gangbuster staff. Carter’s story, heretofore little known, involves her participation in the prosecution of Lucky Luciano, but also much more. Her legal career, her long struggle for civil rights and social justice in New York, and her political work are all explored here for the first time.---Robert Weldon Whalen, author of Murder, Inc., and the Moral Life: Gangsters and Gangbusters in La Guardia’s New York
Marilyn Greenwald is a professor emerita in the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. Her teaching and research interests include biography writing, news reporting, and reviewing the arts. She is the author of Pauline Frederick Reporting: A Pioneering Broadcaster Covers the Cold War (Potomac, 2015) and A Woman of the Times: Journalism, Feminism, and the Career of Charlotte Curtis (Ohio University Press, 1999), which was a notable book of the New York Times.
Yun Li (Author)
Yun Li is a reporter at CNBC covering the US financial markets. Her work has appeared in Reuters, Bloomberg News, and other outlets. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University.
Introduction | 1
1. Heirs to the Struggle | 7
2. Free But Not Equal | 29
3. One Vision in Her Eye, One Cry in Her Soul | 49
4. The Business of Reaching New Heights | 67
5. From Squash Racquet to Racket Squasher | 80
6. “I Must Save My Sister” | 97
7. Getting Lucky: The People v. Charles Luciano | 112
8. “Making History for the Race” | 129
9. “A Prelude to Greater Tasks” | 143
10. The Aftermath | 161
Acknowledgments | 169
Notes | 171
Bibliography | 191
Index | 195
Photographs follow page 86
