Biography
Younger brother of Detroit physician Ossian Sweet and the family member who fired the shot that killed a white mob member during the September 9, 1925 attack on the Sweet family's newly-purchased home in a previously all-white Detroit neighborhood. Tried alone in the second trial in April 1926 with Clarence Darrow leading the defense; acquitted by an all-white jury on grounds of self-defense — a landmark verdict establishing that Black Americans had the same right as whites to defend their homes against mob violence.
