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

~ (Author) "When he was seven years old, Ossian Sweet witnessed a lynching..." (more)
Key Phrases: eleven defendants, faculty minutes, phosphate industry, Ossian Sweet, New York, Henry Sweet (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this engaging narrative, Vine (Families in Pain) uses the harrowing prosecution of Dr. Ossian Sweet for murder to chronicle the deplorable state of race relations throughout the country in the early decades of the last century. Born in 1894 in the segregated town of Bartow, Fla., Sweet managed to obtain a medical degree, study in Europe and establish himself as a promising member of Detroit's emerging "black bourgeoisie" while still in his late 20s. Having witnessed a lynching as a seven-year-old child, Sweet was anything but naïve about the dangers faced by blacks who tried to cross the racial divide that permeated every aspect of American society during the Jim Crow era. Vine sets the stage for the central courtroom drama by summarizing critical events that shaped the racial climate, which included the release of D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, a reinvigorated Ku Klux Klan, rigid segregation and the exodus of Southern blacks to the factories of the North. Aware of these factors, Sweet kept a low profile when buying a house on a mainly white street in Detroit. Nevertheless, a mob assembled within a day and began hurling rocks and racial epithets. Not to be intimidated, Sweet and others in the house fired back at the crowd, killing one man and injuring another. Murder charges followed. Fortunately, the NAACP was able to persuade the renowned Clarence Darrow to take up the defense in 1925. In the end, Vine offers a stark reminder of our history of racial intolerance.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The outline reads like a movie synopsis: in 1925, a distinguished black doctor, Ossian Sweet, moves into a white Detroit neighborhood and is surrounded by a rock-throwing mob. Shots ring out, killing a white man; the doctor and 10 of his friends and family are indicted for murder. Darrow, exhausted from the Scopes monkey trial and in the twilight of his career, heroically saddles up to defeat ignorance one more time. Reality, of course, defies such simplified descriptions (Darrow was only part of a sophisticated defense effort marshaled by the NAACP; the first trial ended in a hung jury; tragedy hounded Sweet despite exoneration), but that's where historians ride to the rescue. Vine has chosen an underappreciated case and done a terrific job of researching both the particulars and the context crucial to understanding them. She is a better historian than writer, however. She starts the story too slowly and is prone to awkward locutions that will cause readers to stumble. Fortunately, these flaws are eclipsed by the importance of the topic. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Amistad; 1 edition (March 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0066214157
• ISBN-13: 978-0066214153
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #667,567 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the Ossian Sweet story, January 28, 2009

By	Timothy P. Koerner (Great Lakes, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: One Man's Castle: Clarence Darrow in Defense of the American Dream (Paperback)

ONE MAN'S CASTLE describes the experience of an individual who became part of what historians term the "Great Migration" or "Southern Exodus". During the early 1900s, hundreds of thousands of Southerners left the land of their birth and traveled north in search of more prosperous lives and, in the case of the main characters in this book, personal safety. Specifically, the book is about Florida-born, African-American Ossian Sweet (1895-1960) after he migrated to Detroit in the early 1920s and of a tragic incident that happened in late summer 1925 while Sweet was living in the so-called Promised Land.

Ossian Sweet, a Howard University-trained medical doctor, married Gladys Atkinson from Pittsburgh, and together they had a daughter. Desiring to acquire a nice home for his family, Dr. Sweet bought a bungalow and attempted to move into a primarily European immigrant neighborhood on Detroit's east side.

This was a 1920s Detroit where Ku Klux Klan members were likely to be members of the Police Department and where a KKK-backed candidate had nearly been elected mayor of the city the year before. Amidst incidents in the city involving blacks moving into previously all-white neighborhoods (protected by so-called restrictive covenants), Dr. Sweet not only purchased a house in such a neighborhood but prepared, with family members and friends, to defend his home (10 weapons, 400 rounds) against those who might try to prevent this.

On the evening of September 9, 1925 a group of whites gathered across the street, and some began pelting the Sweet house with stones and rocks. Police stationed in the area did not intervene, and shots rang out from the Sweet house resulting in one person across the street dead and another wounded. The police next arrested all eleven persons in the Sweet house; prosecutors charged them with conspiring to commit murder. The NAACP secured prominent attorney Clarence Darrow to defend the accused, who were all eventually cleared of charges (and life in prison) after two trials.

What is the significance of this case? For the Sweets, it could not have been much of a victory. Shortly after this, the baby daughter and then Gladys died from tuberculosis. Dr. Sweet was unsuccessful later in both marriage and political career and committed suicide in his sixties. Restricitve covenants remained legal until a Supreme Court decision in the late 1940s. Later, redlining and other real estate devices assisted in continuing residential segregation. Indeed, as this review is written, the Detroit area is one of the most segregated in the entire country.

This book was overshadowed by publication (in the same year) of another book on the Sweet case, Kevin Boyle's ARC OF JUSTICE, which won a National Book Award, an honor richly deserved. While slightly different in approach, this book is superb too, and even more readable than the Boyle book. Read both books if you can.

Tim Koerner
January 2009

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A rose by any other name, October 10, 2004

By	The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers (RAWSISTAZ.com and BlackBookReviews.net) - See all my reviews

A rose by any other name

ONE MAN'S CASTLE is an all too familiar story about victimization simply because of the color of someone's skin. Phyllis Vines
reconstructs a suspenseful detective story that heralds a collision between a Black physician and the Ku Klux Klan.

Dr. Ossian Sweet journeyed to Paris, France to study medicine under the supervision of Madame Curie. At that stage of his life, Sweet has reached all of his goals; attended the right schools, received a medical degree that would guarantee him financial and social prominence, and had married well. But when he and his wife arrive at the American hospital in Paris to deliver their first child, they are turned away. And seemingly for the first time Sweet realizes he is not protected from the opprobrium of racism. Racism is not new to Sweet, he is a son of the south, but his previous racial encounters were impersonal to him. However, after hearing the words of the American Ambassador, that 'the hospital is operating in the spirit of America', things change for Sweet. This time racism carries a personal tag, as if Jim Crow had searched for him and targeted his sense of masculinity.

The Sweets return to the states and acquire lodging in a fairly affluent section of Detroit, Michigan. But this is an America still wallowing in the bowels of racial disparity. The Sweets become victims of racial slurs, physical attacks on their home, and blatant indifference from the local police authorities. Amid the volatile confrontations between the racial groups someone is killed and all of the occupants of Sweet's home are jailed.

This extensively researched and tartly presented tragedy of Dr. Ossian Sweet's efforts to reside in a home he purchased in an all-white Detroitneighborhood introduces a colorful cast of characters and a wide range of social history. Because Detroit's population described their city as one of the most metropolitan cities in the world, the tension between Blacks and whites was supposedly manageable, but the events in 1925 changed that perception. The NAACP was compelled to hire famed lawyer Clarence Darrow, which led to one of the most incendiary courtroom dramas in the history of the United States. This is a remarkable book about our obsession with race. It reads like a thriller, except this story is true.

Reviewed by aNN
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vine grows on you, Darrow's story grow hope for everyone, October 6, 2004

By	BoaltGeek (California) - See all my reviews

This story motivated more than one judge to begin their study of law in the hope that they too could combat racism and ignorance. While this is the beginning of one of many victories, the problem of race continues and the courts remain a viable means of change. Schools remain segregated, public funds remain unbalanced, and inequality before the courts for minorities is yet not eliminated. But Vine gives us hope that one day, with lawyers and judges who care this much will create such a world.