DETROIT – As a 10-year-old, Daniel Baxter didn’t fully grasp the level of history that lies inside 2905 Garland St. on Detroit’s southeast side.
He was asked by a newspaper reporter in 1975 what he knew about the house.
His response was what you’d expect from a kid.
“A Black man lived here who killed a white man, and he didn’t go to jail for it,” Baxter, 60, said on Wednesday (Aug. 13). “That’s all I knew at that particular time.”
The man who originally owned the house was named Dr. Ossian Sweet.
Baxter, whose day job is serving as the Director of Elections for the city of Detroit, also runs the Dr. Ossian Sweet Foundation and has served as the caretaker of the home for more than 20 years.
Sweet’s name had already been fully etched into history when a State Historic Marker was placed at the home in 2018.
On Wednesday, the city took a step further by dedicating a Memorial Park bearing his name, located next to the home on Garland and Charlevoix streets.
Baxter’s parents bought the home in 1958, and 17 years later, when he was interviewed as a stand-in for his father, he didn’t fully understand the scope of what had happened in the house 50 years earlier.
On Aug. 13, he wants to make sure its history is preserved.
“There’s an old African proverb that says, until the lion learns how to write the tell of the hunt, will always glorify the hunter,” Baxter said. “That simply means that we have to control our own narrative.”
“We have to be empowered with our history, because the one thing about history is that it makes you not only appreciate what happened in the past,” Baxter added. “Whether it’s good or bad, but it makes you take a look at yourself and ask the question, ‘Am I doing enough?’”
On the night of Sept. 9, 1925, a violent mob of white residents, angered by Sweet’s family moving into the formerly all-white neighborhood, stormed the home as the Detroit police stood watch.
After rocks were thrown through the bedroom window, Sweet’s brother, Henry, fired two shots from a shotgun.
One of the bullets killed a man across the street.
The police arrested all 11 people inside the home, setting up a pair of high-profile murder trials.
The NAACP, which had only been in existence for 16 years, brought in legendary attorney Clarence Darrow as chief counsel to help the Sweets with their defense.
The first trial ended in a mistrial on Nov. 27, 1925. The retrial, which was only of Henry Sweet, ended with his acquittal on May 13, 1926.
Charges against the 10 others were subsequently dropped on July 21, 1927.
“This was a case that I studied in Law School,” Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, a former Wayne County Prosecutor, said during the ceremony on Wednesday. “The fact that the Wayne County Prosecutor’s office prosecuted the Sweet family in the 1920s, to me, was one of the great injustices of the office.”
The park features several historical markers detailing Sweet’s life, as well as the events of that night nearly 100 years ago.
It also lays out the conditions of a time when racist covenants, physical violence, and redlining were done to keep African Americans out of neighborhoods.
“It’s awesome, because that means his memory lives on,” Jacqueline Spotts, Dr. Sweet’s niece, said. Spotts, 83, was raised by Sweet’s mother and, like Baxter, didn’t know that the home was so historically consequential because, for years, her family wouldn’t speak of it.
“Because someone lost their life, they did not talk about it,” she said. “And you have to remember, we were in the Jim Crow days, so everything was kept undercover.”
Spotts, a former Detroit Public School teacher, said she first saw her uncle’s name appear in Black History Month materials, which sparked her curiosity. It has become a massive point of pride that culminated in the opening of the park.
“I can assure you, if our ancestors know anything, this is one rejoicing man, because this trial affected his mental state at some point. So, he is happy. He’s free.”
History 4 All: The story and legacy of Dr. Ossian Sweet
In this segment of our History 4 All special, Local 4’s Kimberly Gill and Devin Scillian visit with Daniel Baxter, founder of the Dr. Ossian Sweet Foundation, at the Ossian H. Sweet House in Detroit.