Negroes and the Gun : The Black Tradition of Arms (9781616148409) by Johnson Nicholas

Author:Johnson, Nicholas [Johnson, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781616148409
Publisher: Random House Digital Dist
Published: 2013-12-02T05:00:00+00:00

Fig. 6.3. Dr. Ossian Sweet. (Courtesy of the Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library.)

The case of State v. Sweet et al. ended in the acquittal of eight defendants and a mistrial for Ossian, his brother Henry, and Leonard Morse. The victory was a testament to, well . . . to what? The brilliance of Clarence Darrow? The strong hand of fate? Perhaps to the conscience and humanity of the twelve white men who sat in judgment? Surely it was some of each, although who knows how much. And what to make of the report from snoops at the jury-room door who heard one juror say, “I’ll sit here forever before I condemn those niggers”?

Ultimately, it was the simple, earnest testimony of Ossian Sweet that captured the scene. He recounted somberly the mob of hundreds outside his home, stones crashing through windows, and the venomous yelps, “Here’s Niggers, Get them, Get them.” Asked by Darrow to describe his state of mind at that moment, Sweet conjured the collective consciousness of the race.

I realized I was facing the same mob that had hounded my people through its entire history. In my mind I was pretty confident of what I was up against, with my back against the wall. I was filled with a peculiar fear, the fear of one who knows the history of my race.40

For Darrow, it was left to seal the message, to tug on the pride and shame and guilt of the jurors. His summation, in the marathon style of the day, ran for hours. One observer said that he had never believed the stories that Darrow could make men weep, but now he had seen it. We don’t know whether Walter White wept under the power of Darrow’s summation. But White clearly had tremendous respect and affection for Darrow. So much so that he gave his firstborn son the middle name Darrow.

The magic of Darrow was that he had something for everyone. It was the same basic message conveyed in multiple cultural dialects. Although it is hard to know precisely what within the six-hour summation especially appealed to pivotal jurors, for black folk there was a crucial moment where Darrow articulated the longing of the race for their own Leonidas. And there he sat, said Darrow, in the person of Dr. Ossian Sweet, who had seen his people

tied to stakes in free America and a fire built around living human beings until they roasted to death; he knew they had been driven from their homes in the North and in great cities and here in Detroit, and he was there not only to defend himself and his house and his friends but to stand up for the integrity and independence of the abused race . . . a hero who fought a brave fight against fearful odds, the fight for right, for justice, for freedom, and his name will live and he will be honored when most of us are forgotten.41

Calculations were made for a subsequent retrial, but the results would be anticlimactic.

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