Opening Court Statement for Defendants

Opening Court Statement for Defendants

"Does it explode?" To the infamous question "What happens to a dream deferred," the African-American poet Paul Dunbar suggests that a dream thwarted becomes anger, perhaps justifiable anger and resentment. Dr. Ossian Sweet had a dream. To achieve that dream, he did everything right. He worked his way through college and studied medicine at the nation's most notable African-American university, Howard University, in America's capital city. He could do so only by laboring at the most unpleasant and menial tasks, working in coal mines and waiting tables in restaurants, restaurants where he would not even be allowed to eat because he was a Black man. But Sweet never complained. His eyes on the future prize of bettering his own life, and even more importantly, the lives of his children. He dreamed of realizing the ultimate aim of every father, to own his own home in the best community he could find. It did not matter if his neighbors were Black, White, or purple, only that the community was clean, safe, and a good environment to raise children.

Sweet was the grandson of lawbreakers -- yes, run-away slaves, people for whom it was criminal to be free, people to whom this land should bow down and apologize for deferring the dream of freedom for yet another generation. Like his parents, Ossian Sweet believed that if only he worked hard, the American dream of success might be his, and that he might live free and proud, safe and secure in his own home. What more could any father want?

Sweet left the hated South, a Florida of lynchings and Jim Crow, and fled northward, as so many African-American have done, in search of greater opportunities. He dreamed and achieved the ultimate American dream of home ownership. But cruelly, in the Promised Land of the North, right here, in Detroit, he found only violence. Members of racist organizations like the Klu Klux Klan barraged the Sweet family with threats almost as soon as the family arrived. Instead of a Welcome Wagon of neighborliness, the family found open hostility. Initially, Sweet was undeterred. Like always, he had hopes of a better tomorrow.

Then, throngs of hostile Whites mobbed his house one night, throwing stones. On the night in question, September 8th, even though an angry mob was gathered outside his private residence, Smith did not seek violence. He waited, and called the police, asking for assistance, like any law-abiding citizen. He feared for his wife Gladys' life, and the lives of his children. What did the police do? Nothing. If the police had dispersed the crowd, as was their duty, we would not even be here today, ladies and gentleman of the jury. Finally, the crowd, screaming and chanting the vilest of names which are not fit for children to hear, began to throw stones at the Sweet residence.

Self-defense is justifiable if a person feels threatened. The most obvious example of self-defense is if a man wakes and finds a burglar in his home. The burglar is an intruder and might threaten the lives of the homeowner and the homeowner's family, so it is right and proper that someone try to defend their home, and the burglar must suffer the consequences. The irony is, if Sweet awoke and found a single burglar in his home and defended himself, he would not be on trial today. But a White angry racial mob's implied threat seems harder for the state to understand. Sweet only used the guns he had bought to defend his property and family after the mob began to actually try to break into the Sweet residence, hurling stones through the upstairs windows. Can Sweet be blamed for panicking, trying to save his family and the home he tried to hard to build, and firing out into the assembled, angry mob?

The prosecution will try to play upon your own fears, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. They will suggest that Sweet could have called the police instead of shooting -- the police that had allowed a mob to congregate on the lawn of the Sweet property. Six policemen were already standing there, staring at the stone-throwing crowd, but these officers did nothing to stop the intruders, not even the people who were throwing stones at Sweet's windows. The prosecution will try to play upon your fears of Sweet as an angry Black man, although he is a father and a man trained in the arts of healing, not of harm. He is an ordinary homeowner and father. He did not come to Detroit looking for trouble, merely a better life. He had grown up in a state of the union where it was common to see White men kill Black men and go unpunished and hoped to find better life in this city.