Biography
Ossian Sweet was a 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; gunfire from inside killed one mob member and wounded another. Henry Sweet admitted firing, but the prosecution could not identify who fired the fatal bullet. 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.
1920s remaining-entry review: Douglas Linder's trial chronology dates the arrest to September 9, 1925, bail release to December 1925, and dismissal of the remaining defendants' charges to July 21, 1927. His narrative establishes police detention after the September 9 arrest and subsequent denial of bail. September 1925 is recorded at month precision for incarceration; no exact county-jail admission day is inferred. The inherited May 13, 1926 release date was Henry Sweet's acquittal, not Ossian's release. Ossian's first trial ended in a mistrial and his charges were later dismissed; he was not individually acquitted on Henry's verdict date. Existing portrait retained. Exact jail-admission and bail-release days remain unresolved.
Trial chronology; Trial account
Michael Hannon's University of Minnesota Law Library history identifies Frank Murphy as the trial judge and Robert M. Toms as prosecuting attorney. Henry admitted firing a weapon, but the prosecution could not identify the gun or shooter responsible for the fatal bullet, which was never found. The first trial ended in a mistrial; Henry's separate trial ended in acquittal. These findings correct the earlier description's definitive attribution of the fatal shot to Henry. They do not establish a new physical release date.
University of Minnesota Law Library, The Sweet Trials (2010), PDF pages 10, 25, 28, 43–44, 62.
