Civil rights & activism / City history
Ossian Sweet
1895–1960 · physician, defendant in the 1925–1926 Sweet trials
Black Detroit physician whose 1925 defense of his new home against a white mob led to the landmark Sweet trials, won by Clarence Darrow.
- Born
Orlando, Florida- Died
Detroit, Michigan
aged 64- Birth name
- Ossian Haven Sweet
- Detroit years
- 1921–1960
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Ossian Sweet, the grandson of a formerly enslaved man, earned his medical degree at Howard University and moved to Detroit in 1921, where racism kept him out of most hospitals. After further study in Vienna and Paris he came back in 1924 and joined Dunbar Hospital, the city's first hospital serving Black patients. Wanting to leave crowded Black Bottom, he bought a brick bungalow at 2905 Garland Street in an all-white east side neighborhood and moved in on September 8, 1925. The next evening a mob of hundreds surrounded the house and stoned its windows; shots fired from inside killed one man and wounded another. Sweet, his wife Gladys and nine relatives and friends were charged with murder. The NAACP hired Clarence Darrow, and after a mistrial and the acquittal of his brother Henry in 1926, all charges were dropped. The case became a milestone in the fight for equal housing, but Sweet's later life was marked by loss, and he took his own life in Detroit in 1960.
Highlights
- Bought the house at 2905 Garland Street in 1925, sparking a mob attack
- Charged with murder with ten others; defended by Clarence Darrow
- All charges dropped in 1927 after an all-white jury acquitted his brother
- His house became a Michigan State Historic Site (1975) and joined the National Register (1985)
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 2
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Lived here · 1925–
Ossian H. Sweet House
The 1919 brick bungalow he bought in 1925, scene of the mob attack; a Michigan State Historic Site with a marker, listed on the National Register in 1985. Privately owned, view from the street.
Worked here · 1924–1925
Dunbar Hospital
Closed · 1918–1962
Detroit's first hospital for Black patients, where Sweet worked on his return in 1924; the 1892 building still stands and is on the National Register.