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Ossian Sweet

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Ossian Sweet (October 30, 1895 - March 20, 1960) was an African American doctor notable for his self-defense of his newly-purchased home against a white mob attempting to force him out in Detroit in 1925.

Ossian (pronounced "ocean" like the body of water) Sweet was born in Orlando, Florida. At age 6, he witnessed a lynching. He earned his undergraduate degree from Wilberforce University and studied medicine at Howard University. He practiced in Detroit, then studied further in Vienna and then in Paris, where he attended lectures by Madame Curie.

He returned to Detroit from France in 1924 and started to work at Detroit's first black hospital, Dunbar. Having saved enough money, he moved his family in 1925 from his wife's parent's home in an all-white neighborhood to 2905 Garland Street, another all-white neighborhood at Garland and Charlevoix.

In the following days, Sweet's house was repeatedly surrounded by white mobs, encouraged by the "Waterworks Improvement Association," which gathered outside Sweet's home to force him to move from the neighborhood. At around 10 p.m. on Thursday, September 9 1925, Leon Breiner, one member of the mob of at least 1,000, was shot dead, and another was injured. The shots were fired from within Sweet's house.

All eleven occupants of the house (Sweet, his wife Gladys, two brothers and a number of friends who were helping Sweet to defend his home) were arrested and tried for murder by a jury presided over by young judge Frank Murphy. With assistance from the NAACP, the defense (headed by Clarence Darrow, assisted by Arthur Garfield Hays and Walter M. Nelson) successfully construed the fear that had assailed Sweet and his friends, and also asked whether the jury of 12 whites would be able to forsake their racial differences and give a "Negro" a fair trial. The first jury was unable to form a verdict after 46 hours of deliberations.

The defense then elected to hold eleven separate trials. Henry Sweet, Ossian's younger brother who had admitted to actually firing the gun, was tried first and defended again by Darrow with Detroit lawyer Thomas Chawke replacing Hays. He was acquitted after a deliberation of less than four hours. Judge Murphy's instructions to the jury are available.The prosecution then dropped the charges against the remaining ten defendants.

The two closing arguments of Clarence Darrow from the first and second trials are available, and show how he learned from the first trial and reshaped his remarks.

The trial was presided over by the Honorable Frank Murphy, who went on to become Governor of Michigan and an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Sweet's later life was troubled. His daughter Iva died at the age of 2 in 1926, and his wife died soon after, both from tuberculosis contracted while Gladys was in prison. Breiner's widow sued for $150,000, but the case was dismissed. Sweet ran for office four times, but lost each time. He remarried twice, but both marriages ended in divorce. He committed suicide in 1960.

The trial is memorialized in two official Michigan Historical Markers:

Additionally, there is a "Michigan Legal Milestones". plaque (erected by the State Bar of Michigan in the first floor of the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice in Detroit.

Kevin Boyle's chronicle, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age was adapted into a play. Mr. Boyle was honored by the Detroit City Council for The Sweet Trials. *The Sweet Trials: Malice Aforethought is a play written by Arthur Beer, based on the the trials of Ossian and Henry Sweet, and derived from Kevin Boyle's Arc of Justice.

Bibliography and Further Reading

  • Boyle, Kevin, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age, chronicles Sweet's life and trial, and was awarded the 2004 National Book Award for Non-Fiction. ISBN 0805079335; ISBN 978-0805079333
  • Darrow, Clarence, The Story of My Life, "The Negro in the North" (1932).
  • Darrow, Clarence, Verdicts Out of Court, "The Problem of the Negro" (1963).
  • Haldeman-Julius, Marcet, Clarence Darrow's Two Greatest Trials: Reports of the Scopes Anti-Evolution Case and the Dr. Sweet Negro Trial (Girard, Kansas: Haldeman-Julius Company, 1927).
  • Harris, Paul, Black Rage Confronts the Law (NYU Press 1997). ISBN 0814735274 320.
  • Hays, Arthur Garfield, Let Freedom Ring, "Freedom of Residence" (1928).
  • Levine, David Allan, Internal Combustion: The Races in Detroit 1915-1926 (Greenwood 1976).
  • Stone, I.F., Clarence Darrow for the Defense, "Road to Glory" (Doubleday 1941).
  • Tierney, Kevin, Darrow: A Biography, "The Sweet Trials" (Crowell 1979).
  • Unofficial Transcript of the Henry Sweet Trial, Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library (prepared by NAACP).
  • Weinberg, Arthur, Editor, Attorney for the Damned, "You Can't Live There!" (1957).
  • Weinberg, Kenneth G., A Man's Home, A Man's Castle (McCall 1971).

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