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Ossian SweetOssian Sweet (died 1960) was a black doctor notable for being acquitted when tried for murder in Detroit in 1925. Sweet was born in Florida and studied medicine at Howard University. He practiced in Detroit, then studied further in Vienna and Paris. He returned to Detroit in 1924 and started to work at Detroit's first black hospital, Dunbar. Having saved enough money, he moved his family in 1925 from the lower east side ghetto to 2905 Garland Road, in an all-white neighborhood at Garland and Charlevoix. In the following days, Sweet's house was repeatedly surrounded by a white mobs, encouraged by the "Water Works Improvement Association", which gathered outside Sweet's home to force him to move from the neighborhood. At around 10pm on Thursday September 9 1925, Leon Breiner, one member of the mob of at least a 1,000 people 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, and a number of friends who were helping Sweet to defend his home) were arrested and they were all tried for murder by a jury presided over by young judge Frank Murphy. With assistance from the NAACP, the defence (headed by Clarence Darrow, assisted by Arthur Garfield Hays and Walter M. Nelson]) successfully put across the fear that had assailed Sweet and his friends, and also asked whether the jury of 12 whites would be able to give a negro a fair trial, and the first jury was unable to form a verdict after 46 hours of deliberations. One of the defendants (Sweet's 21-year-old brother, Henry) was tried a second time, and defended again by Darrow. He was acquitted after a deliberation of less than 4 hours, and his aquittal shocked the city. Sweet's later life was troubled. His daughter, Iva, died aged only 2 in 1926, and his wife died soon after, both from tuberculosis. The widow of Breiner sued for $150,000 but the case was dismissed. Sweet ran for office four times, but lost all the elections. He also remarried twice, but both marriages ending in divorce. In 1960, he shot himself. External link *Key figures in the Sweet trials
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