A Home of One's Own

1.      Why do you think residential segregation continued for another 40 years after the Sweet case?

Ossian Sweet was a product of the American dream and a victim of American failings.  Dr. Sweet was born in Florida in 1895, the second son of a former slave.  He grew up at a time when Jim Crow laws were in full effect and American blacks faced dire economic circumstances.  While the emancipation of slaves and the passage of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments abolished slavery and gave blacks citizenship, the Federal government failed to intervene in the affairs of southern states, particularly race relations.  In the Supreme Court ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson (1986), the doctrine of separate but equal was established.  American blacks had been granted rights through Constitutional amendments, but it became clear was up to individuals to fight for those rights and many did not know where to begin. 

Because of his experiences as a slave, then a poor rural farmer, Dr. Sweet’s father was determined that his son would have a better life and instilled in Ossian a desire to educate himself and become a professional.  Dr. Sweet attended the all-black Wilberforce University, then medical school and began his medical practice in Detroit in the early 1920s.  It was his goal to be a part of W.E.B. du Bois’ “Talented Tenth” and rise above the barriers imposed on black Americans at the time.  Post-war America saw a large migration of southern blacks to northern urban centers who hoped to escape their grinding poverty.  Many cities, like Detroit, developed cultural enclaves where various races lived in homogeneous communities, and few individuals ventured outside their allotted neighborhoods.  This led to ghettos in the poorer parts of Detroit.  Dr. Sweet was determined to break the race barrier and purchase a middle class home for his family in a white neighborhood.  Suspicion and fear of blacks had spread from the south to the north, particularly after the post-war migrations.  Blacks competed with white for jobs and housing and many whites closed ranks against them.  Reaction by Dr. Sweet’s neighbors was swift and violent and he and his friends and family had to defend themselves with firearms to protect their home.  How could this have happened in the America we know today?  There was great reluctance on the part of the Federal government and courts to legislate morality.  Racism was whipped up through the spread of the Klu Klux Klan across the country and their propaganda encouraged white people to believe that blacks in their neighborhoods would drive the property prices down, increase crime rate and cause civil strife.  For decades, disreputable real estate companies scared whites into moving into new housing tracts outside the cities, bought the old houses, then sold them to blacks at an inflated price.  Real estate “redlining” (unofficial racial boundary lines) became an established practice until the 1960s.  As long as people were allowed to profit from the misery of others and justify their behavior through racism, these injustices would prevail.  It took federal intervention through the executive and the courts to rectify this evil.

 2.  How do you think this event played a big part in African American history?

The trial and acquittal of Dr. Sweet was surrounded by a whirlwind of media coverage.  The nature of the case, whether a man was entitled to defend his home and his life, was at the heart of American independence and embedded in the Bill of Rights.  The results of the trial would answer the question of whether the Court would uphold the rights of black Americans as well as white.  This drew the attention of the NAACP as a potential landmark case that would further the rights of black Americans across the country.  James Weldon Johnson, General Secretary of the NAACP invited Clarence Darrow to be part of the legal defense team.  After a long-much publicized process, Dr. Sweet was acquitted, the first black man exonerated of the killing of a white man.  Publicity surrounding the trial exposed the hatred and racism and made that type of behavior disreputable.  After the Sweet trial, there were a number of challenges to the separate but equal doctrine brought to the Supreme Court, but this doctrine survived as a precedent up through the end of World War II.  When President Truman integrated the military in post-war America, the Federal government finally took the moral high road.  Following Truman’s lead, former California Governor and former supporter of anti-Asian legislation, Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion in Brown v. Board of Education that smashed segregation in schools and opened the door to the Civil Rights movement.  The success of Dr. Sweet and the NAACP was another link in the long chain of battles American blacks fought for equality.  It is important because it brought negative publicity for racist attacks on blacks in white neighborhoods and the KKK, and set a legal precedent.  It is unfortunate that it took another forty years for the rest of the nation to support the Civil Rights movement.