Arc of Justice

"And everyone knew that when the color line was breached, housing values would collapse, spinning downward until Garland Avenue was swallowed into the ghetto and everything was lost." 

This quote encapsulates the snowball-effect fear that many urban whites  have about sharing their neighborhoods with black residents. Real estate  agents fan the flames of these fears by lowering home values after a black     person buys a home in an all-white neighborhood.

"Other men might have hated to see their youth slipping from them." 

One step closer to his goal of moving among an urban elite, Ossian cultivates an air of maturity and professionalism beginning in his medical training atHoward. This cultivation is also a reaction to the way in which all black men, regardless of age or status, are, in the South, regarded as 'boys.' 

"If he wanted to save his home, Dr. Sweet had to be willing to kill." 

From the time he buys his home on the all-white Garland Avenue, Ossian has no illusions about what this move might mean for himself and Gladys. Ossian has seen and heard of enough violence against black people for far less than breaching the color line to think otherwise.

"That's what the cops at headquarters would be looking for: something they could use to build a case against Ossian and his compatriots, to turn them from the mob's intended victims into crazed colored men, criminals, murders." 

The prosecution's case against Ossian and the others hinges on being able to prove that the group had premeditated the murder by stocking the house  with guns, and that they had fired without provocation. Race relations in  America at the time also make portrayals of black men as 'crazed' easy for white Americans to believe. 

"But they had no political power—no vote, no elected representatives—to assure that their voices would be heard." 

After gaining their freedom, black Americans struggle without any kind of structural support with which to move forward. This struggle, against racist laws, practices, and prejudices, continues after Reconstruction through to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and even into the present moment.

“‘If we are lazy and idle,’ explained the AME's founder, ‘the enemies of freedom plead it as a cause why we ought not to be free, and say we are better in a state of servitude.’" 

Ossian's lifelong involvement with the African Methodist Episcopal Church instilled in him the AME's value system, which espouses hard work and     education as the means to transcend black Americans' oppression. Ossian adheres to these values as he makes his journey from the son of Southern      sharecroppers to successful doctor and homeowner in Detroit.

"Jim Crow didn't discriminate between 'good' Negroes and 'bad' Negroes; every black person was suspect, every community open to assault." 

Though many black Southerners flee the Jim Crow South in hopes of escaping its violence, some find themselves face-to-face with the same kinds of racially-motivated violence in the North. It doesn't matter to Ossian's white neighbors that he's an upstanding citizen, a doctor, even; all  that matters to them is that he is black. 

"None of this segregation had the sanction of law—state civil rights statutes remained on the books—and it wasn't consistently applied: it was a patchwork of practices, differing from place to place and even street to street." 

The matter of legality becomes central to Ossian's case, or rather, it becomes irrelevant. Because segregation has no legal standing, it's difficult for the incident at the Sweets’ home to have a straightforward legal proceeding, grounded entirely in the rule of the law. 

"In any case, there were only twenty-seven colored doctors in the entire city in 1921, one for every fifteen hundred Negroes." 

This demonstrates both Ossian's tenacity and bravery in the face of the    terrible odds before him. Ossian works his way into a profession few black    men at the time hoped to attain, and then, using his entrepreneurial mind,       establishes a thriving practice in an area of Detroit that most needs his help.

"There are dirty white people of course, but white people are the judges and colored people are being judged." 

The head of the Detroit Urban League, a black member of the city's Talented Tenth, subscribes to a kind of activism that succumbs to the rhetoric of white supremacy, which is not entirely uncommon. This quote has special significance in the context of Ossian and the other defendants' casein that they are judged by a group of entirely white men. 

“‘The difference,’ Ossian bitingly replied, ‘is the difference between a Negro who has been educated in the North and one who has been educated in the South.’" 

Ossian refers here to the difference between himself, educated in the North, and his younger brother Otis, educated in the South, whom Ossian feels  lacks sophistication. Because he adheres to the AME and NAACP's ideals of black transcendence, Ossian sees himself—educated, well-dressed, eloquent—as superior to a black man who lacks the same qualities.

"Here was a new kind of politics, centered around an ethnic Democrat, the product of a party that had long championed white supremacy, appealing to the masses, black and white, with promises of equal rights before the law while the most respectable people in the city raged against him." 

Detroit's election of Johnny Smith, carried by black and immigrant votes, signals a sea of change for the city, away from conservatism, away from the Klan's influences. It's under these changing political conditions that Ossian's trial takes place, and may well be a factor in it being declared a mistrial.

"We have carefully restricted this section to include only the kind of people you would be glad to have next door." 

Taken from a copy for a new real estate development on Detroit's west side in the 1920s, this kind of language, veiled, though not entirely unclear, communicates who exactly would be welcome—white. Though not always explicit, restrictions like this make certain that the color line stays firmly in place.

"It was a process shot through with irony, whites suddenly being victimized by the very practices that were supposed to protect them from Negro invasion." 

As property values decline with the arrival of a black neighbor and wages drop, whites find their homes' prices falling and, unable to keep up with payments, or sometimes being able to secure a decent home loan, are forced out of the very neighborhoods they work to protect from desegregation. 

"A man had the right to defend his own home. But it would be a serious mistake to have another defend it for him." 

Ossian's friend and attorney, Cecil Rowlette, advises Dr. Alexander Turner against doing just what Ossian does: rounding up a group of friends to defend his new home from potential mob attack. One man, or one family, can hold themselves accountable for their actions, but bringing more people into the situation could have potentially lethal consequences, as Ossian learns.

"Kennedy couldn't help but notice that the police hadn't catalogued the dozen stones littering the front porch and its overhanging roof."

The prosecution can only win if it proves that Ossian, or another among   his group, fired into the crowd before any provocation took place. However,     eyewitnesses, the defendants, and physical evidence prove that this is not     the case; the mob threw stones at the Sweets’ house, damaging their property before shots were fired. 

"But blacks and the ethnic masses were also divided by decades of fierce competition for a share of industrialism's dregs, a torture history of mutual distrust, and the poison of the American racial ideal, which made the swarthiest of immigrants desperate to prove himself a white man." 

This schism, fostered by the native-born white Americans, prevents any kind     of solidarity between black Americans and immigrants. In his defense,  Darrow pits immigrant anxieties over proving their whiteness against the    viciousness of white supremacist groups like the KKK asking immigrants to     whose aid they would come: violent racists or their black compatriots.  

“‘The decision “cast no reflection” on the lawyers' legal skill,’ he said, ‘but [the Sweet case] was bigger than Detroit or Michigan…for it was the dramatic climax of the nation-wide fight to enforce residential segregation.’" 

James Weldon Johnson hopes that Ossian's case will provide the NAACP   with the final push it needs to both secure funding for its Legal Defense Fund, and to bolster its case against housing segregation in the Supreme       Court. By bringing in a celebrity lawyer like Clarence Darrow, too, Johnson hopes to get the nation's attention. 

“‘I venture to say that there is not a person at this table who does not better understand and more truly follow the concepts of American than any of these self-styled “100 percent Americans” who goes around with a hood over his head.’" 

Much of Clarence Darrow's defense of his clients comes in the form of leaning into the politics surrounding the trial. He makes sure to select jurors who each have ties to an immigrant community, then show them that, even though they are all white, they do not have anything in common with the hate-spewing KKK, with which Darrow aligns the prosecution and their witnesses. 

“‘I don't believe in mixing people that way,’ he replied, ‘colored and white.’" 

During the defense's cross-examinations of the prosecution's witnesses, Darrow gets Ray Dove, the Sweets’ neighbor, to admit that he feels racial prejudice against blacks. While the prosecution hopes to build a case that Ossian moved onto Garland Avenue to cause trouble, Darrow proves that racism existed in the neighborhood long before Ossian's arrival.

“‘This is the question of the psychology of the race,’ he argued. ‘of how everything known to a race affects its actions.’" 

Darrow attempts to frame his defense of Ossian and the others by getting the jurors to see how the history of African-Americans' oppression has     determined the psychology of their race. For this reason, Darrow claims, it's     important to know Ossian's entire backstory, including his childhood in Bartow, which ultimately shaped the way he acts.

"Darrow had taken on the Sweet case for just this moment of terrible honesty, when, with a twist of evidence and a flash of eloquence, he made the courtroom see that white supremacy was an illusion, a poisonous, ruinous fantasy, just as it was an illusion to believe that capitalism was just, that men were responsible for the evil that they did, and that there was a God in Heaven." 

Darrow ends his closing statements by asking the jurors whether, given the bravery and resilience of black Americans when faced with violent oppression, black Americans weren't the nation's superior race. Darrow's background, as the son of an abolitionist and adherent to modernist ideals, has positioned him as uniquely able to deliver such rhetoric at a time when most white men would have shied away. This is likely what renders the jury unable to reach a consensus on the verdict. 

“‘We will have the beautiful music of Mr. Darrow's sweet lullaby, waving aside anything that bears on malice and on felonious homicide.’

Mocking Darrow's casual style of speaking, assistant prosecutor Lester Moll       tries to turn the jury's attention back to the death of Leon Breiner, a member of the mob outside the Sweets’ house. Moll asks the jury to seek      justice for Leon Breiner, rather than have sympathy or understanding for     Ossian and his compatriots.