Biography
Black physician who, in September 1925, moved his family into a previously all-white Detroit neighborhood. The second night, a white mob of 500+ surrounded the house and attacked it with stones; from inside, gunfire (by Sweet's younger brother Henry) killed one mob member and wounded another. Police arrested all eleven Black occupants of the house and charged them with murder. Defended by Clarence Darrow and the NAACP in two trials. The first ended in a hung jury; the second tried Henry alone and ended in acquittal. Charges against Ossian and the others were then dropped. The Sweet case became one of the defining tests of Black Americans' right to armed self-defense of their homes.
