By Cody Yarbrough, Contributing Writer
One hundred years ago, a mob had formed around Dr. Ossian Sweet’s home. Hundreds of White men and women had swarmed around the house for a sinister common goal. They had come to intimidate him and his family from staying in the neighborhood. They had come to protect the racial “purity” of their community. They had come to reaffirm the white supremacist culture of 1925 Detroit.
Sweet was not the first Black person they had done this to. Just a few months previously, Dr. Alexander Turner, one of Sweet’s colleagues, had moved into a white neighborhood. Within five hours of him doing so, an angry crowd of whites surrounded his new home and forced themselves inside. They then grabbed Turner and put a gun to his head. With the piece of iron pressed to his skull, Turner signed away the deed to his home and left that very same day. They expected Sweet to do the same. The mob assumed that their large numbers would scare him into submission like all the Black families before him, causing him and his family to scurry away in the dead of night in fear for their lives. But Dr. Sweet and the men inside of his home were holding rifles in their hands.
They knew of the violence that a white mob could commit against Black people in this country and the consequences of denying White men their privileges. The slurs and insults hurled at them from outside soon turned into bricks and debris. However, instead of instead of the shrieks of terrified Negros coming from the inside, the mob was met with the sound of gunfire. 7 to 10 shots rang from the house into the street. One shot struck a man in the back as he was huddled up with a group of his friends, killing him where he stood. The crowd of previously strong white racists devolved into a mosh pit of scared civilians. Not long after, the police rushed in and arrested every Black man in the home. Yet despite spending the night in prison, Dr. Sweet had preserved a place in Detroit for Black people outside of Black Bottom. More importantly, he persevered to a place in Detroit for himself and his family.
News of Sweet’s Home Defense reached the ears of the NAACP. To them, Sweet’s close encounter was their opportunity. The civil rights organization had recently set its sights on racial housing discrimination and was looking for a case to take to court to establish a legal president for housing equality. And the Sweet case was the best scenario they could’ve hoped for.
The NAACP Covered Sweet’s legal fees and gave the case to Clarence Darrow, a white Irish lawyer who had worked with the organization before. He was facing an uphill battle, to say the least. Not only was he combating the white supremacist system of a majority white midwestern city, but he would also be trying to convince an all-white jury that a group of negros were in the right to kill a white man. Darrow, however, had a simple yet genius strategy in mind.
Darrow argued the Castle Doctrine. A legal precedent that allowed an inhabitant to defend their home with lethal force. Sweet, as a man, had a God-given right to defend his house and those inhabiting it from outside threats. This defense not only presented Sweet as a man equal to a white man under the law, but it also used preexisting legal standards to bolster Sweet’s right to use lethal force. The only thing left was to present the mob as a legitimate threat. Luckily for Darrow, the personal history of Dr. Sweet was more than enough to convey that point.
Sweet was originally from Florida. He knew firsthand what a white mob meant to the Black American. When brought to the stand to testify, Sweet told the court about witnessing the result of a lynching at the age of 7. Despite being raised in the upper middle class, Sweet and his sibling were painfully aware of what it meant to be Black in this country. He told the jury about the terror he felt during the D.C race riots of 1919 while he was studying at Howard University. He even reminded the jury of the incident with Dr. Turner that had occurred only months before.
In a statement during his testimony, Dr. Sweet perfectly summarized his experience with racial violence by saying, “When I opened the door and saw the mob, I realized I was facing the same mob that had hounded my people throughout its entire history. In my mind, I was pretty confident of what I was up against, with my back against the wall. I was filled with a peculiar fear, the kind no one could feel unless they had known the history of our race. I knew what mobs had done to my people before.”
After hearing the arguments, the jury went in for deliberations. After 46 hours of discussion, their decision was indecision. The 12 angry men came out split 7-5. The majority of them agreed that Sweet and his family had done nothing wrong. Meanwhile, the other five would not be swayed in favor of a Black man standing up for himself.
One of the jurors later told a reporter, “A nigger has killed a white man and I’ll be burned in hell before I ever vote to acquit a nigger who has killed a white man.”
But instead of sending the jury back in for further deliberation, the judge called it a mistrial. The Sweets were free to go, and the good doctor was able to return to his castle. Prosecutors would try to nail the Sweets again by trying them one by one, but when Dr. Sweet’s brother Henry was acquitted in his trial, the State decided that going after them was more trouble than it was worth.
The story of Dr. Ossian Sweet isn’t simply one of violence or righteous anger but of a man’s humanity being put on trial. The right to self-defense and the defense of your loved ones is a law of nature. Even a dog is allowed to bark and bite at a man if it feels cornered. How much more does a Black man deserve to protect his life and his family? It’s because of Sweet’s boldness and those like him that Detroit is the Black mecca that it is today. A boldness that caused them to execute their rights without waiting for the permission of the status quo. So, when remembering Dr. Sweet 100 years later, don’t think of him as a fed-up Black man with a gun, but as a husband, father, and brother who would not let white supremacy define who he was as a human being.