Civil Rights Figure. A physician who had graduated from Howard University in Washington, DC, he had built up a successful practice in Detroit, Michigan to where he was wealthy enough by a house an affluent, all-white neighborhood. He and his family suffered discrimination and harassment for the move, which culminated in a mob that attacked their house with bottles and rocks on the night of September 9, 1925. Armed with guns, friends and family of Doctor Sweet who were in the house to defend it opened fire and killed one of the mob. Doctor Sweet and ten others were arrested and put on trial for murder, and, defended by lawyer and social activist Clarence Darrow, were acquitted by an all-white jury, having been found their self-defense was justified. The case became a benchmark in the African-American Civil Rights Movement, and was detailed in "Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age" by author Kevin Boyle.
Civil Rights Figure. A physician who had graduated from Howard University in Washington, DC, he had built up a successful practice in Detroit, Michigan to where he was wealthy enough by a house an affluent, all-white neighborhood. He and his family suffered discrimination and harassment for the move, which culminated in a mob that attacked their house with bottles and rocks on the night of September 9, 1925. Armed with guns, friends and family of Doctor Sweet who were in the house to defend it opened fire and killed one of the mob. Doctor Sweet and ten others were arrested and put on trial for murder, and, defended by lawyer and social activist Clarence Darrow, were acquitted by an all-white jury, having been found their self-defense was justified. The case became a benchmark in the African-American Civil Rights Movement, and was detailed in "Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age" by author Kevin Boyle.
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