The Ossian Sweet Story

Dr. Ossian Sweet (Photo courtesy of Walter Reuther Library, Wayne State University.)

In 1925 Detroit, a doctor wished to move into a better neighborhood. It would have been no problem at all except for one fact: Dr. Ossian Sweet was African-American.

Sweet was a product of the African American “Great Migration.” During the first half of the twentieth century, he and many other Southern blacks moved from North to South (For more on the Great Migration, see Isabel Wilkersons’ The Warmth of Other Suns or Elizabeth Anne Martin’s Detroit and the Great Migration, 1916-1929.).

A Mob and Violence

Sweet would have never considered moving into a predominantly white neighborhood in his home state of Florida. Michigan, though, greeted him equally violently. On the first night that his extended family and friends occupied the house, a mob formed outside. Once an object crashed through the window of their home on the corner of Garland and Charlevoix, this man did what many in his situation did before him: He defended himself. Shots were fired from the upstairs of the Sweets’ bungalow. One man was killed and another injured.

The Trial and Outcome

The eleven African-Americans in the house were immediately arrested. The ensuing court case involved other notable figures, including attorney Clarence Darrow and civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson. Future governor of Michigan Frank Murphy presided over the case. All defendants were ultimately acquitted and charges dismissed. A man’s home was indeed still his castle, and his race was not a factor in his right to defend.

Similar incidents occurred in Midwestern and Northeastern states in the following decades. The Sweet case, however, is notable for its outcome and for the illustrious personages involved. Defense attorney Clarence Darrow clearly recognized its importance, calling it “a cross section of human history.” “It involves the future,” he said, “and the hope of some of us that the future will be better than the past.”

Books:

Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age by Kevin Boyle

One Man’s Castle: Clarence Darrow in Defense of the American Dream by Phyllis Vine

Links:

A Detroit News Article on the Sweet Case by Patricia Zacharias

Famous American Trials: The Sweet Trials, 1925 and 1926 by Douglas O. Linder, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law

Michigan Legal Milestones: The Ossian Sweet Trial (A State Bar of Michigan site)

Sweet’s house (pictured above) was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985 (Photo by Andrew Jameson, 2008. Source: Wikimedia Commons).