Ossian Sweet

Ossian Sweet (born October 30, 1895 in Bartow , † March 20, 1960 in Detroit ) was an American doctor who became known through the so-called Sweet process.

Origin and education

Sweet grew up in Florida in a strictly religious family of ex-slaves. As a teenager, he left Florida to study at Wilberforce University , an African American college . In Wilberforce he became a member of Kappa Alpha Psi and earned a Bachelor of Science. He earned his studies with various part-time jobs. He then studied medicine at Howard University in Washington, DC He managed to establish himself as a doctor and achieve a certain wealth. He was recognized as a role model in his family and grew up knowing that he belonged to the Talented Tenth , the so-called black performance elite at the time.

In 1919 he experienced the Red Summer , brutal racist riots in the wake of the First World War in Washington. Sweet married Gladys Mitchell in 1922.

Time in Europe and return to the USA

In 1923 Sweet continued his studies in Vienna and Paris. Among other things, he heard lectures from Marie Curie . The time in Europe was carefree, the only experience of racial prejudice there was the rejection of his heavily pregnant wife at the American Hospital in Paris. In 1924 the Sweets returned to the United States and he began working at Dunbar Hospital in Detroit. He moved to a white neighborhood, 2905 Garland Street, near Garland and Charlevoix. He was well aware of the prejudices of the neighborhood.

The place of the event including a plaque

The house was close to Gladi's parents and his practice. The sweets paid US $ 18,500 which was about US $ 6,000 above market value.

After the Sweets moved in on September 8, 1925, they were threatened and holed up in the house with friends and relatives who had experienced something similar. The local police under Inspector Norton Schuknecht were also raised to protect the sweets. The situation became ominous on the second night when a crowd gathered again in front of the house and started throwing stones and making threats. Henry Sweet, Ossian's brother, opened fire with a rifle he had brought with him, one man, Leon Breiner died, another, Eric Houghberg, was wounded. Sweet and his helpers were arrested and taken to prison.

Henry Sweet was acquitted at the trial under Judge Frank Murphy . The proceedings against the accessaries were discontinued. The Sweets had been supported by James Weldon Johnson and the NAACP , the NAACP did not have a lot of funds and could only carry out two other lawsuits in the entire USA that year. She hoped for a great publicity from the process, which also occurred. Walter White and Clarence Darrow worked on the defense. The class action against all involved initially ended with the jury declaring it undecided. Darrow argued that if blacks attacked a white man's house, they would not even have been charged. Thereafter, each of the defendants was tried individually, first against Dr. Ossian's brother Henry, who had admitted his involvement in the shooting. Darrow and his co-defense attorney Thomas Chawke obtained an acquittal, after which prosecutors dropped charges against the remainder.

The Sweets did not return to their home until 1928, and their daughter and wife died of tuberculosis, possibly due to the conditions of the detention. Sweet himself failed when trying to establish polyclinics in black residential areas in an economically viable manner. In 1960 he took his own life after mental and health problems.

Aftermath

The trial was translated into a book and play Arc of Justice by Kevin Boyle . Malice Aforethought: The Sweet Trials was another play by Arthur Beer and incorporated into a docudrama by Gordon C. Bennett. The Ossian H. Sweet House is a listed building.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kevin Boyle: Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age . Henry Holt and Company, New York 2004, ISBN 0-8050-7145-8 .
2. ^ Manning Marable: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. Allen Lane, April 4, 2011, p. 27 , accessed April 9, 2013 . 
3. ^ Judge Frank Murphy's charge to the jury, People vs. Sweet, Famous American Trials, University of Missouri, Kansas City. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on June 25, 2010 ; accessed on April 9, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ^ UDM Theater Department: The Sweet Trials Project. University of Detroit Mercy, February 3, 2007, accessed April 9, 2013 .