People Who Made a Difference: Dr. Ossian Sweet

Posted: 02/24/13

For Black History Month we would like to give tribute to some of the great Detroiters, both past and present, who’ve worked hard to improved the quality of life in their city. Detroit’s greatest asset is its people; and each week in February we’ll acknowledge people who were called to make a difference in the lives of those around them; paving the path toward an improved Detroit for the future.

Dr. Ossian Sweet

Dr. Ossian Sweet was born in 1895 in Florida. Sweet attended Howard University where he earned his medical accreditation. Sweet then moved to Detroit where he met his wife Gladys and established his own office in Detroit’s “Black Bottom” community. In 1923 he moved to Europe to further his education then came back to Detroit in 1924 and started work at Dunbar Hospital, the city’s first black hospital.

In 1925, Sweet bought a house in an all-white neighborhood in Detroit on Garland Street. He knew that his family’s presence on the block would cause some trouble but, in the pursuit of happiness, he decided to buy the home anyway stating “I have to die a man or live a coward”. On the second day after Sweet and his family moved in, an angry crowd of whites gathered outside the house and began to throw stones at the house. Sweet, Gladys and nine other relatives and friends were in the house and armed to protect themselves. As tensions rose shots were fired from the house and one white man was killed. Everyone in the Sweet home was arrested for murder. The NAACP brought in Clarence Darrow, Arthur Garfield Hays, and Walter M. Nelson to defend Sweet and everyone in the house during the shooting. Sweet and the others were acquitted of murder charges by an all-white jury.

The Dr. Ossian Sweet case was a ground breaking trial during a time of segregation and high tension between whites and minorities. This case showed the nation and Detroit that no matter what color, “a man’s home is his castle and that no one has a right to invade it”

For more information on the Dr. Ossian Sweet case click HERE
Source: ‘I have to die a man or live a coward’ — the saga of Dr. Ossian Sweet By Patricia Zacharias / The Detroit News

A1peopleshoice
“Die a man or live a coward”The Sweet’s made unprecedented history. An all white male ,jury aquitting a Black man, that was unheard of. That shows that there is some good in some people no matter what color they are when their civil and human rights have been violated. My hat goes off to the entire defense team and Judge Frank Murphy. I never new what did or who he was, Mayor of Detroit and Governor of Michigan.