Arc of Justice

Ossian, Gladys, and their baby, Iva, return to Detroit on June 28, 1924. Ossian hopes to buy a house right away but given Detroit's population surge, home prices "were skyrocketing, up 67 percent from the year before" (137). Additionally, real estate agents always sell homes to black buyers "above the market rate" (138). The Sweets settle in with the Mitchells for the fall and winter of 1924-1925, while Ossian saves money. By spring 1925, Ossian is ready to buy a house.

While Ossian was away in Europe, two of his brothers, Otis and Henry, moved north, following their older brother's footsteps. Otis, a "friendly, engaging man" (136) moves to Detroit and opens his dental office near Palace Drugs in Black Bottom. Henry, a "genial and gregarious" (137) young man, enrolls at Wilberforce, pursuing a Bachelor of Science with the hopes of starting a professional career of his own. Though Ossian bristles a bit at Otis' penchant for the frivolous, such as baseball and nightclubs, he admires Henry's studiousness and nascent civil rights activism.

The political climate during that spring is especially fraught. In 1923-1924, both Detroit's criminal court and mayoral office witness a political sea of change as progressives are elected to office. Frank Murphy, a "Detroit lawyer and Democratic Party activist" (138), and John Smith, a white Polish-American Catholic and lifelong eastside resident, both win by appealing to the black and immigrant voting base on Detroit's east side. Murphy shifts the balance of seven criminal court judges from majority conservative to majority progressive and hopes to make the court "a temple of justice, not a butcher shop" (139). Smith, running in a special election to replace Detroit's ailing former mayor, uses brutal tactics to enforce his progressive politics, including confronting cops "sent to break up a strike" (141) at a Detroit plant and ending up with a broken nose. The Ku Klux Klan, whose membership in Detroit by 1923 has swollen to twenty thousand, champion their own write-in candidate, but lose when Smith insists any ballot with the candidate's name misspelled be thrown out.

The Detroit real estate market, too, is in crisis. With the explosion in population,the housing demand is high, as are housing prices. For native-born working-class whites, this means cobbling together multiple mortgages to afford a small home in a predominantly white neighborhood like the one around Garland Avenue.Different obstacles stand in black home buyers' ways: racist exclusive language written into laws for new developments, unspoken rules against selling homes to blacks, sanctions for those real estate agents "who dared to break the rules" (145) and show houses to black buyers, inflated prices for black buyers, and racist banks that refuse to grant black buyers a loan of any kind.

When the Sweets start looking for a home to buy, they find their options limited by the above factors. Fortunately, Lucius Riley, one of Ossian's first patients in Black Bottom, knows of a couple willing to sell their bungalow on Garland Avenue, "in a white neighborhood a few miles east of Black Bottom" (145), to a black buyer. This is because the couple, Ed and Marie Smith, are not both white. Ed Smith is a light-skinned black man who spends "most of his adult life passing for white" (146). With this kind of racial mobility, Ed develops a career for himself as a real estate agent. Taking advantage of the Sweets’ desperation to buy a home, Ed charges them $6,000 more for the house than he would a white family.

Just before the Sweets buy their home, two of Ossian's friends suffer terrible losses at the hands of the Tireman Avenue Improvement Association. First, Dr. Alexander Turner, the head of surgery at Dunbar Memorial, "tired of the traffic noise on his street" in a majority black neighborhood, buys a home a mile away, in an all-white neighborhood. Having heard about recent attacks on a black family who moved just one block outside of the unspoken color line, Dr. Turner asks his lawyer, Cecil Rowlette, if a group of his colleagues can stay the first night in the new house with Dr. Turner and his wife. Cecil advises against it, saying that a man has "the right to defend his own home," but it would be a "serious mistake to have others defend it for him." Shortly after moving in, a white mob assembles outside Dr. Turner's new home, throwing rocks at workers, and smashing windows. The police stand by, watching it all happen. A sudden knock comes at the front door, and a man's voice says he's "been sent by Mayor Smith to provide…protection" (152). When Dr. Turner opens the front door, the white mob breaks through and begins destroying the home's interior. Men who claim to be "representatives of the Tireman Avenue Improvement Association" (153) physically restrain Dr. Turner and force him to sign the deed of the house over to them. Terrified, Dr. Turner agrees.

Two weeks later, on July 7, 1925, Ossian's friend from his college job at the hotel, Vollington Bristol, runs into trouble with the Tireman Avenue Improvement Association. For years, the Bristols had owned a house just ten blocks east of Dr. Turner's, though the Bristols had never lived in it—too far from their funeral parlor in Black Bottom. They had rented it to white families who each took advantage of their black landlords by refusing to pay rent and damaging the apartments. The Bristols decide to start renting to black tenants, but each of them suffers intimidation by white neighbors and leave soon after. Fed up, the Bristols decide to move into the house themselves. Vollington requests a police guard for his family's first few nights in the house. The first night passes without incident, but on the second night, a violent mob forms outside. The police and mob trade fire, but no one is hurt. The half dozen patrolmen hold the house until reinforcements arrive and drive the mob away, arresting nineteen white men and confiscating "thirty-five guns, two knives, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition" (154).

Inspired by the Tireman Association, white residents around Garland Avenue form their own coalition to deal with the perceived threat of the Sweets’ arrival: the Waterworks Park Improvement Association. Headed by a real estate agent named James Conley, who fears his "property values would tumble" (159) should a black family move in, the WPIA responds to rumors of a black family moving into their neighborhood by putting up posters and holding a rally at the nearby elementary school to drum up support for 'putting out' the black family. In attendance are several undercover police officers who give a report back to Inspector Norton Schuknecht. Weighing the fear of a race riot, like those in Chicago and St. Louis, with his loyalty to the majority white police force, Schuknecht decides to send patrolmen to the Sweets’, then have them "stand back" (162) and let the mob drive them out.

As July turns to August, Ossian makes plans for their move date. Gladys stockpiles enough food "for a week's siege" (164), Ossian recruits his brothers, his brothers' friends, and hires a handyman and a chauffeur, as Dr. Turner had. Ossian also stockpiles weapons and thinks through "defensive tactics" (164), remembering the military training he had as a young man at Wilberforce. Meanwhile, the WPIA's membership surges to "a thousand people" (165). Unfortunately for James Conley, though, not everyone in the neighborhood agrees to sign "restrictive covenants" (165) promising they will only sell their house to white buyers. Marie Smith agrees to sign the renege on the deal and sign the restrictive covenant only if the WPIA will pay "her new asking price of thirty thousand dollars" (166).

Ossian's brother, Otis, calls on the support of Detective Inspector Robert "Bert" McPherson, head of the "Black Hand Squad" (164) which handles the Italian mobsters and "Negroes of every description" (164) to help protect Ossian's house. On September 7, just twelve hours before the Sweets begin their move-in, McPherson alerts Inspector Schuknecht of the situation. Though infuriated by the late notice from a man of McPherson's stature, Schuknecht organizes a defense of the Sweets’ house. He tells the men assigned to the house that they should "avoid excessive force" (167), but protect the Sweets’ house from a mob even if it takes "every man in the department" (167). This message comes at an emotional time for the officers: just the night before, a cop had been killed by a black man evading arrest.

The Sweets’ first night in the bungalow, September 8, passes without event under the guard of police patrol. The second night, however, the patrolmen stand by as the mob begins hurling rocks at the house. From the bungalow's second story, gunfire begins. 

Ossian, Gladys, Otis, Henry, and the six other men from the Sweets' house arrive at the Detroit police headquarters around ten o'clock at night. Lieutenant Blondy Hayes, the man from the Black Hand Squad who had removed Ossian's handcuffs and led the group to the paddy wagon through the safety of the back door, puts the group into a holding cell. Ossian calls his lawyer, Julian Perry, and Hewitt Watson, one of the "insurance men" (172) calls his lawyer, Charles Mahoney, "one of the most able black attorneys" (172) in Detroit. Neither attorney arrives by the time Hayes asks Ossian to come with him for questioning by Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Ted Kennedy.

Kennedy begins with softball questions, but as he ramps up, Ossian grows "agitated, talking too fast, stumbling over his words" (173). Ossian refuses to admit that he knew Garland Avenue "was a white neighborhood" (173), that he asked "the other men to help him defend his home" (173), or that he'd deliberately armed the men in the house. Ossian insists that he simply bought the house and felt he has "the right to live in it" (174). The other men won't crack either. Though their stories and attitudes differ slightly, they all agree that Ossian didn't ask them to come over to protect the house. Only Henry, Ossian's younger brother, admits that he took up a rile when the "stones began coming in" (178), and subsequently fired it. He claims he fired it above the crowd, though, not directly at them. For her part, Gladys refuses to be intimidated as Ossian had been. She sticks firmly to a non-committal version of events, saying that she can't remember "a single moment, not a word spoken, not a step taken" (177). When Kennedy asks her if she'll remember anything by tomorrow morning or in a week, she replies that she will not.

On the outside, Ossian and Hewitt Watson's calls to their respective lawyers begin a mobilization of Detroit's Talented Tenth. Watson's lawyer, Charles Mahoney, doesn't have a phone at home, but the man who screens his calls in the evenings, William Osby, has just as much pull in the black community as Mahoney. Osby contacts the Detroit branch of the NAACP,rallying the support of the branch's legal counsel, W. Hayes McKinney, and president, Reverend Robert Bradby of Black Bottom's Second Baptist. Julian Perry, Ossian's attorney, contacts his friend attorney Cecil Rowlette, who had successfully defended Alexander Turner and others in the black community accused of crimes against whites while defending their homes from attack.

Wayne County Prosecutor Robert Toms sets out to build his case against Ossian and the others. Given Assistant Prosecutor Kennedy's interviews with the suspects, Toms suspects that the group's attorneys will go for a case of self-defense. As long as the defense attorneys can prove that a mob, defined in Detroit as "twelve or more armed people or thirty unarmed people assembled to intimidate or inflict harm" (186), did more than twenty-five dollars of property damage to the house before someone opened fire, Ossian and the others will go free. Toms, confident that, should the case go to trial, the jury will be all-white, sets out to bring his argument "within the letter of the law" (187). He sends Assistant Prosecutor Kennedy back to Garland Avenue to collect additional testimony.

On Garland Avenue, Kennedy first interviews Inspector Schuknecht and his brother-in-law, Otto Lemhagen, who joined the police when they entered the Sweets’ home on the night of the attack. When Kennedy asks how many people were gathered outside the Sweets’ house before the gunfire, Schuknecht says it was "twelve or fifteen people" (187). And after? "Twenty-five, thirty people," (188) Schuknecht says. Lemhagen confirms this. Though these numbers don't match those given by Ossian and the others inside the house, they do fall below the state's legal definition of a mob, thus bolstering the prosecution's case. Lemhagen even offers that Gladys "laughed" (188) when the police came into the house. Next, Kennedy talks to the Sweets’ neighbors, the Doves and the Getkes. Both families deny hearing anything thrown at the house before the gunshots, though they admit there was a crowd of "more than fifty" (189). Kennedy doesn't pursue this line of questioning any further.

Held in decrepit Wayne County Jail cells, Ossian, Gladys, and the others agonize over the silence from their attorneys. William Davis, a "federal narcotics officer" (27), cracks first. Fearing he'll lose his government job, Davis decides to break with the agreed-upon story Ossian and the others had concocted and gives up Henry Sweet, the handyman, Joe Mack, and Leonard Morse, one of the insurance agents. Davis claims that he heard the three of them talk about firing their weapons at the crowd while they were in the paddy wagon on their way to the jail.

On Thursday, September 10, Judge John Faust, "a dedicated member of the court's liberal majority," denies Perry, Rowlette, and Mahoney's petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Thus, Ossian and the other ten remain in jail, though uncharged with a crime. After the defense secures the writ from "a sympathetic circuit court judge," the prosecution files its warrants to Judge Frank Murphy. The language of the warrants makes clear that the prosecution will be pursuing "the maximum": charging all eleven suspects with "assault with intent to commit murder and murder in the first degree." Though Judge Murphy has a history of showing mercy towards the criminals he sees as "victims of an unjust social system" (193), he has no problem with granting the warrants.

That evening, the Waterworks Park Improvement Association holds a meeting at Amity Lodge Hall, blocks west of Garland Avenue. A thousand people arrive to hear James Conley and two "avowed Klansmen" speak in support of segregation. Later, the KKK holds a rally in Waterworks Park, "in the center of Mayor Johnny Smith's east side" (194). On September 12, after days of silence on the matter, Mayor Smith issues a broadside condemning the "KKK's campaign to establish 'a dictatorship' in Detroit" (195). Rather than supporting Ossian and the other ten suspects, though, Smith condemns "the moving by colored persons" into white neighborhoods where they know "their presence would cause disturbance" (196). Smith insists that blacks and whites should respect the city's color line to maintain peace.

After being denied bail by Judge Faust, Ossian and the others receive one piece of good news. Because they've been formally charged, they can finally meet with their lawyers. On Saturday, September 12, Perry, Rowlette, Mahoney, and McKinney arrive at the jail with the good news that the Detroit NAACP has agreed to "underwriting the entire defense, no matter the cost." Second Baptist will hold a fundraiser at its service on Sunday, which they expect to be "wildly successful." In his meeting with the attorneys, Ossian sticks to his "unlikely story" (194) that the other defendants had been at his home "by coincidence." Ossian insists that there had been "no planned defense" (195). His lawyers don't push back.

By September 1925, James Weldon Johnson, secretary at the NAACP's Manhattan headquarters, has been looking for a case like Ossian's for some time. Overwhelmed by the violence of whites enforcing the color line, Johnson has found a potential donor for the creation of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund—a young man named Charles Garland, who has inherited a million dollars from his father. Garland, feeling "he hadn't earned a penny" (206) of the inheritance, is looking for a way to use the money. On the advice of Roger Baldwin of the American Civil Liberties Union, Garland establishes the American Fund of Public Service, and appoints Johnson to its board. Johnson drafts a proposal for his friend Moorfield Storey to submit to the AFPS, asking it to match the twenty-five thousand dollars the NAACP will raise for the Legal Defense Fund. Fearing that the NAACP will not be able to raise its share, Johnson jumps at the chance to take on Ossian's case, knowing that the large black community in Detroit may be able to help raise the funds themselves.

When Johnson first contacts the Detroit branch of the NAACP, W. Hayes McKinney wires his response on the morning of Saturday, September 12: "Branch handling matter." This worries Johnson, but he waits it out, offering "all cooperation possible" (200). On Sunday morning, while golfing in New Jersey with friends, Johnson receives a desperate call from McKinney, who's just received the indictments and denial of bail for his clients. Johnson dispatches Walter White, his assistant secretary to Detroit right away.

White arrives by train on Tuesday, September 15. A high-spirited man who has used his ability to pass for white to help the NAACP's cause for years, White, under the advice of local circuit judge Ira Jayne, decides that the best way for the eleven to beat their charges is to hire a "prestigious white attorney." This will help to sway the opinion of even the more liberal-minded whites in Detroit who feel alienated by the killing they believe "was unwarranted" (213). This suggestion incenses the three black attorneys currently working the case. Perry and Mahoney pledge to resign should this happen, so White backs down, telling the attorneys that he'll wait until after the next day's hearing to make a decision.

At the first trial hearing, Assistant Prosecutor Lester Moll calls Inspector Schuknecht, and Ossian's neighbors, Ray Dove and John Getke to the witness stand. Moll asks questions designed to steer the jury's attention to the conclusion that the Sweets’ home was not under threat at the time of the shooting. All three witnesses testify that the crowd gathered outside the Sweets’ house was less than fifteen people. All three men also claim they neither saw nor heard any disturbance to the Sweets’ house before the gunfire. Unable to call their own witnesses, the defense must use "hostile witnesses to break the state's case" (215). Rowlette decides to focus on getting one of the men to admit that there were more than fifteen people gathered outside the house—to no avail. Mahoney has more success with Getke, getting the man to finally admit that he couldn't say for sure whether or not he hadn't seen or heard anything thrown at the Sweets’ house before the shooting. Despite this admission, Judge Faust decides that the prosecution has a strong enough case to take it to trial under the court's presiding judge, Frank Murphy.

After their defeat, Perry, Rowlette, and Mahoney meet with White again, this time prepared to accept the addition of a white attorney to their team—conditionally. Rowlette asks for the white attorney, Thomas Chawke, to be paid five thousand dollars, and for an additional five thousand dollars to be split between himself, Perry, and Mahoney. White balks at the idea. He hadn't imagined paying the three black attorneys more than five hundred dollars to split. He also had someone other than Chawke, a skilled criminal lawyer on retainer to "a coalition of mobsters" (218), in mind to defend Ossian and the others. On the train ride back to Manhattan, White's anger subsides, and he begins brainstorming how to get a different attorney attached to the case.

Meanwhile, Johnson begins a press campaign to drum up financial and political support for Ossian's case, in service to Johnson's overall anti-segregation crusade. Though well received by the black communities in Detroit and Manhattan, Johnson has difficulty getting his message heard by white progressives, and "the ethnic masses whose support" the NAACP hoped to have. Johnson finds that many whites have caved to the rhetoric of fear spread by the KKK and others. A journal run by white, liberal Christians headquartered across the street from Manhattan's NAACP office runs an article expressing that "the social mixture of white and black leads to unhappiness" (221).

As Ossian and the others' stays in the Wayne County Jail become a bit more comfortable with Detroit's NAACP providing "catered meals" (224), making the Sweets’ house payments, and the Sweet's father, Henry coming to visit, Otis Sweet decides to take matters into his hands. He drafts a letter to the NAACP's Manhattan branch, signed by Charles Washington, Leonard Morse, and William Davis, expressing that the eleven defendants wish to turn control of their defense over to the NAACP. Otis asks for the best legal talent available and dismisses "the sordid efforts of narrow self-seekers [such as Rowlette]" (225). White, with the help of Arthur Spingarn, NAACP's Legal Committee chair, immediately begins scouring Detroit for the best white attorney the NAACP can afford. Unfortunately, Thomas Chawke is the only one willing to take on the case, and for much more than the cash-strapped NAACP can afford.

At arraignment on Saturday, October 3, Rowlette approaches Judge Frank Murphy with "a briefcase full of precedent" (226). He decides to move away from a self-defense argument and instead focus on the lack of "an identifiable murderer and compelling evidence of conspiracy." Rowlette asks for his clients to be released, especially Gladys, whom he argues, according to common law, shouldn't be "implicated in her husband's crimes." Murphy takes the weekend to think over Rowlette's motion. He decides to grant Gladys "bail of ten thousand dollars" (227), but will move the case to court in two weeks.

On October 5, a letter arrives for Walter White from N.K. McGill, "general counsel for the Chicago Defender." In it, McGill expresses interest in Dr. Sweet's case and explains that he has "free access to such minds as" Clarence Darrow, "the most brilliant defense attorney in the country." When Johnson sees the letter, on October 7, he knows right away that Darrow could be just the "deus ex machina" (228) to save Ossian's case.