One Man's Castle : Clarence Darrow in Defense of the American Dream

Documents the events surrounding the racially charged court case involving the Southern Exodus, the KKK, and the Sweet family, tracing the prejudice that targeted 1925 Detroit's first African-Americans and the unprecedented hiring of attorney Clarence Darrow by the NAACP. By the author of Families in Pain. Reprint. 20,000 first printing. Publisher's description: This tautly told story steps back to a time when Detroit's boosters described their city as one of the most cosmopolitan in the world. It was also a city in which tensions between blacks and whites seemed manageable. Yet all that changed in 1925, when a black family named Sweet bought and moved into a house in a white neighborhood. What began with mothers bringing their children to gawk and stare soon became an angry mob of men, some of them from the local KKK, with stones. The violence that ensued landed Ossian Sweet, a doctor from the "talented tenth," and others from his family in jail and compelled the NAACP -- which had taken up the Sweets' case -- to hire famed attorney Clarence Darrow, who had just finished defending the plaintiff in Tennessee v. John Scopes. Darrow's defense led to one of the most incendiary courtroom dramas in the history of the United States. The outcome was a triumph of cooperation that transcended race in the name of justice This tautly told story steps back to a time when Detroit's boosters described their city as one of the most cosmopolitan in the world. It was also a city in which tensions between blacks and whites seemed manageable. Yet all that changed in 1925, when a black family named Sweet bought and moved into a house in a white neighborhood. What began with mothers bringing their children to gawk and stare soon became an angry mob of men, some of them from the local KKK, with stones. The violence that ensued landed Ossian Sweet, a doctor from the "talented tenth," and others from his family in jail and compelled the NAACP -- which had taken up the Sweets' case -- to hire famed attorney Clarence Darrow, who had just finished defending the plaintiff in Tennessee v. John Scopes. Darrow's defense led to one of the most incendiary courtroom dramas in the history of the United States. The outcome was a triumph of cooperation that transcended race in the name of justice. - Jacket flap.

In this buried chapter of American history, a nearly forgotten case of famed attorney Clarence Darrow comes hauntingly to the surface. In 1925 the NAACP approached Darrow to defend Ossian Sweet — a highly respected black doctor who, after integrating an all-white neighborhood in Detroit, found himself the victim of a community attack. When Sweet and his family fought back, they were caught in a melee in which a white man was fatally shot.

The trial that ensued, one of the most urgent and compelling in the nation's history, would test the basic tenets of the American Dream — the right of a man to defend his own home.

Tautly researched and harrowingly reported, One Man's Castle is an "important slice of American legal history and the history of the civil rights" (Kirkus Reviews).

Florida : "Incomparable and indescribable" The education of Ossian Sweet Moving up Getting settled "Detroit the dynamic" Two cities : Vienna and Paris 2905 Garland Avenue James Weldon Johnson and the NAACP Send Walter White Clarence Darrow sets the stage "Nobody is molesting you" Your fight, my fight The night of September 9 His home is his castle A reasonable man? More than a partial victory A trial fair The darker brother. Title from PDF title page (viewed on June 9, 2008).