The story of Dr. Ossian Sweet and this home "is one of hate, of mobs, of crackling gunfire on the east side, of a death, of the legal wizardry of the late Clarence Darrow, of a deadlocked jury,” the Detroit Free Press wrote March 21, 1960.

But it is also the story of a nationally important civil rights case that makes this relatively modest-looking east-side bungalow a significant Detroit landmark and earned it its rightful place on the National Register of Historic Places.

This two-story, red-bricked Arts and Crafts-style home is located on the northwest corner of Garland Street and Charlevoix Avenue. The house retains much of its original interior decor, including leaded-glass, tile and woodwork, and hardwood floors. Its ground floor has a living room, dining room and sitting room, as well as a sun porch that was added and a modernized kitchen. The second floor has four bedrooms and a full bathroom.

But it is the home’s most prominent occupant and role in history that makes it special.

A Detroit civil rights icon

Dr. Ossian Haven Sweet was born Oct. 30, 1895, in segregated Bartow, Fla., and studied at Wilberforce College in Ohio before graduating from the Howard University Medical School in 1921. He then studied in Austria and France.

In 1922, Sweet moved to Detroit to practice medicine in the city’s Black Bottom neighborhood, the storied hub of African-American life and culture. That same year, Sweet met Gladys Atkinson, and the couple wed. He then went to work at Dunbar Hospital, the first medical facility in the city for Black patients.

Three years after moving to the city, in 1925, Dr. Sweet, his wife and their 1-year-old daughter, Iva, bought the home at 2905 Garland. At the time, Detroit was still largely racially segregated, and the Sweets, who were Black, are believed to be the first people of color to move into the east side neighborhood.

Dr. Sweet, then 31 years old, signed a purchase agreement for the 2,500-square-foot house In May 1925 for $18,500, or about $347,000 in 2025, when adjusted for inflation. That was nearly a third higher than the home’s market value, but the Sweets loved the home and were said to have understood the “tax” being placed upon them because of the color of their skin. The Sweets planned to move in that July. However, a series of violent incidents in the city that occurred between their purchase and their planned move would delay that.

Though the following cases were separate from the attack on the Sweets, they are nonetheless key to the backdrop of the case that followed.

Hate and violence flood Detroit’s streets

Though Detroit was certainly more tolerant than the South during the 1920s, racism and discrimination were still rampant. Black Detroiters were not allowed to stay at certain hotels or eat in certain restaurants. There were separate hospitals and even YMCAs and YWCAs for Black and white patrons, and schools were segregated. And, most relevant to the story here, a number of housing developments had racial restrictions in their property deeds.

At the same time, the Ku Klux Klan was active, not only in the suburbs, but in the city of Detroit. The local KKK claimed to have 200,000 members in the 1920s, with some 22,000 card-carrying members in Detroit itself. Some of this racial hate was undoubtedly spurred by the Great Migration that saw a number of African Americans fleeing Jim Crow segregation in the South for opportunities in the auto plants in Detroit. Between 1915 and 1925, Detroit's Black population grew from 7,000 to 82,000, more than tenfold in 10 years. Because Black people were restricted to living in only certain areas of the city, this influx of new residents meant that it was inevitable some would have to move into white neighborhoods.

Highlighting the racial tensions, the KKK backed Charles Bowles for Detroit mayor, and he came close to winning as a write-in candidate in 1925 - and would ride the support of racist white voters to victory in 1929, though he would serve only briefly, being recalled just six months after taking office in 1930.

On Oct 21, 1924, an anti-Ku Klux Klan rally was held at the Arena Gardens in Detroit’s Cultural Center. Aldrich Blake, an anti-Klan crusader from Oklahoma, delivered a speech while thousands outside tried to drown him out by shouting and honking the horns on their cars. Supporters of Bowles - adorned their cars with banners bearing the mayoral hopeful’s name, and tried to take up all the parking spots around the Gardens in an effort to impede folks from attending the rally. A mob of 6,000 Bowles supporters then descended on the Arena Gardens in an attempt to break up the rally. Police had to resort to tear gas to break things up.

“I have made several addresses in Michigan on the Klan, and have been amazed at the strength it is showing in this state,” Blake said in addressing the riot. “The Klan controls about 29 counties of Michigan at the present time. It will reach its peak in another 12 months and unless something is done to stop it, it will have virtual control of the state in that period. The Klan is stronger here than I had anticipated. I was never interrupted to the extent of having to abandon my lecture in Illinois or Indiana or in the South.”

This sentiment would be on full display the following year.

In March 1925, Aldine and Fleta Mathis moved into 5913 Northfield St. with friends Austin and Susie Burton. All four were African American. The next month, on April 13, mobs of white residents gathered outside the home, and threw bricks through a window of the house. Fleta Mathis fired two shots out of a window, and though no one was hit, she was arrested. A just ruled that she had acted in self-defense, and she was acquitted. The Mathises would stay in the home for several years.

Two months later, a mob of angry white people descended on the Spokane Avenue home of Black doctor Alexander Turner. The attack - several months before the incident at the Sweets’ - occurred the day that the Turners had moved into the otherwise white neighborhood, on June 23, 1925. Two men knocked on the door, saying they represented the mayor's office, but that was almost certainly a lie. As these men were being allowed in, the crowd rushed the door. Turner’s furniture was carried out of the house and thrown into the street.

A few weeks later, on July 7, 1925, a mob of several hundred white people gathered in front of Vollington Bristol's house at 7804 American Ave. near Tireman Avenue. Like with Turner, this happened just hours after Bristol, a Black undertaker, and his family had moved into the home in the all-white neighborhood. Mobs gathered for three consecutive nights trying to force Bristol out, but he stayed.

Three days later, shortly after 10 p.m. on July 10, 1925, a huge mob surrounded 9428 Stoepel Ave, the home of John W. Fletcher, a Black waiter at the Yondotega Club. Fletcher, 40, was at home with his wife, and his 15- and 13-year-old sons. Two friends were also in the house at the time of the mob's assault, which came the day after Fletcher and his family moved in. The Detroit News estimated the mob at about 2,000 people, but the Free Press and Detroit Times put the crowd at nearly 4,000.

Outside the Fletcher home, the massive mob threw rocks and bricks and chanted threats of lynching he and his family. In a situation that would mirror what was to occur at the Sweet House a few months later, Fletcher sought to defend his family from their agitators by firing into the crowd.

"The house had been a target for stones, bricks and missiles of every sort, except bullets, for half an hour before the Negroes retaliated," the Detroit Free Press reported the following morning on its front page. "They thronged the street for several blocks, hooting and jeering, while those close to the house kept it under a steady barrage of rocks, bricks and anything they could lay hands on."

Nearly 75 officers responded to break up the mob. The Fletcher case was the third mob attack in the area of Grand River and Livernois avenues in as many weeks, and the fourth such incident in three months.

Fletcher was accused of shooting Leonard Paul, a 15-year-old white member of the mob twice in the hip. Fletcher was facing charges of assault with intent to do great bodily harm. Fletcher admitted to firing into the crowd, but "only after the house literally had been filled with rocks and bricks," the Free Press noted.

Doctors at Receiving Hospital deemed Paul’s injury to be only a flesh wound and not serious, so Prosecutor Robert M. Toms dropped the charges and ordered Fletcher released the next day.

Fletcher "relieved the situation in his district by moving out yesterday after less than 48 hours' tenancy," the Free Press wrote July 12, 1925. Six officers were on hand to ensure Fletcher remained safe while he "moved his furniture over his brick-strewn lawn from the house in which not one window remained whole."

On July 10, 1925 - the same day the Fletchers were attacked - a large cross was burned on a vacant lot at Prairie and Diversey avenues, not far from the Bristol home. The following day, on July 11, Mayor John W. Smith sought to quell the unrest but put police on alert just in case. Smith, who had defeated the KKK-backed Bowles the previous November, appealed to Detroiters to stop the violence from growing "into a condition which will be a lasting stain on the reputation of Detroit as a law-abiding community." The mayor had also written a letter to Police Commissioner Frank H. Croul ordering officers to treat Black people exactly the same as they'd treat others.

"Detroit police were anticipating further outbreaks near the homes occupied by Negroes im white residential areas, and had full complements of reserves in readiness to deal with any situation that might arise," the Detroit Free Press reported in a front-page article the following day.

Mrs. Edward Smith, who sold the Sweets the home, said that neighbors had threatened her if she sold the property to African Americans.

All of this led to the Sweets delaying their move into the home on Garland Street from that July, when all of these attacks were going on, until that September, when tensions had seemingly cooled down.

They had not.

The attack on 2905 Garland St.

Thinking tensions had died down, the Sweets moved in under the protection of a police escort on Sept. 8, 1925.

However, the very next night, on Sept. 9, 1925, the Sweets were hosting nine friends and family members as they celebrated their new home when a mob of 150 to 200 angry white people gathered outside. Knowing the trouble that could visit them, their daughter, Iva, was staying with Gladys' parents. They began throwing bottles and rocks at the house and hollered at the Sweets to leave. Surrounded by the mob and fearing for their safety given all of the recent attacks on other Black Detroit families in the months before, the Sweets barricaded themselves in the home. Like Fletcher had before, Henry Sweet, Dr. Sweet’s brother, fired from the second floor of the house. Unlike Fletcher, however, Henry Sweet fatally shot one of the attackers, 40-year-old Leon Breiner. Another member of the mob, Erik Holberg, 22, was struck in the leg.

Further illustrating the sentiment in Detroit at the time was the lead of the Detroit Free Press' front page story the day after the incident: "Shots poured without warning and seemingly without provocation," the article read. It's hard to understand how a mob of hundreds throwing rocks and bottles at the Sweet House wouldn't be seen as provocation - especially in the wake of all the series of attacks on Black families that had preceded it. Further, the Free Press article played up sympathy for Breiner and his family.

The shooting caused the mob outside the Sweet House to swell to an estimated 5,000 people. Shortly after the shooting, before the crowd had dispersed, a car carrying Black passengers was driving by the house, and the mob set its sights on it. Police had to safely escort the innocent passersby out of danger, and some 200 Detroit police officers were needed to disperse the crowd.

At the time, the shooter in the Sweet house was not identified, and Ossian and Gladys Sweet and their nine guests were all arrested and charged with first-degree murder and with assault with intent to murder in the nonfatal shooting of Hogberg. Police seized six revolvers, two rifles and a shotgun. The Sweets and friends and family gathered that night were clearly aware of the danger they were facing.

Those charged and held were Ossian and Gladys Sweet; Dr. Sweet's brothers Henry and Dr. Otis Sweet; Bernard C. Morse; John Latting, Claude Washington, Joseph Mack; Bennie Steers; and William Davis, who happened to be a federal narcotics agent. None of the mob that had attacked the Sweets was charged.

A superstar defense

Coming to the Sweet and friends’ aid was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), who hired Clarence Darrow, arguably the most famous lawyer in the country thanks to his defense of the theory of evolution during the Scopes Monkey Trial, which had just wrapped in July 1925. W.E.B. DuBois was among the prominent African Americans who donated for the Sweets’ defense.

Darrow's fee was $5,000, about $94,000 in 2025, when adjusted for inflation. "Because there is a principle involved, I would do it for nothing, but I can't afford it," Darrow was quoted as saying in the Oct. 17, 1925, edition of the Free Press. "It will cost me more than $5,000 to try this case."

Darrow had previously defended African Americans arrested in race riots in Chicago in 1921. "The Negro is entitled to a square deal," Darrow told the Free Press.

Assisting Darrow on the case were Detroit attorney Walter M. Nelson; Arthur Garfield Hayes of the American Civil Liberties Union from New York; Herbert Friedman of Chicago; and three Black attorneys, Charles H. Mahoney, Julian W. Perry and Cecil Rowlette.

Thanks in part to Darrow’s participation, and given the era and discrimination across the country, the trial was national news. Toms, the same prosecutor who had decided not to pursue charges against Fletcher, handled the prosecution in the Sweet case.

Jury selection for the trial began Oct. 30, 1925, and saw Darrow remove two men believed to be Ku Klux Klan members. Over half of the potential jurors questioned admitted they were prejudiced, though newspapers suggested that some might have said so in order to escape jury duty. Only one African American was called to possibly serve on the jury, but was dismissed by the prosecution. More than 80 people were questioned over nearly five days before both sides finally agreed on a pool of 12 white men on Nov. 4.

"Never before in this city have 11 defendants faced a judge jointly charged with murder; never before has a trial jury been selected with such care and discrimination; and in no other criminal case has there been such an aggregation of legal talent banded together for the defense, as counsel say, of a principle," the Free Press wrote Nov. 9, 1925.

Presiding over the case was Judge Frank Murphy, a respected member of the bench who would go on to become U.S. attorney general (1939) and a U.S. Supreme Court justice (1940-49), following stints as mayor of Detroit (1930-33) and governor of Michigan (1937-39).

"Murphy is following the case closely," the Free Press continued. "He realizes, it would seem, that white men's justice is on trial no less than the 11 defendants."

This would seconded by poet James Weldon Johnson, the NAACP’s executive secretary, who wrote in his autobiography that central to the Sweet case was a simple question: “Does the common axiom of Anglo Saxon law, that a man’s house is his castle, apply to a Negro American citizen?”

Arguments in the case began Nov. 5. Toms argued that the 11 defendants had "willfully and with malice aforethought" armed themselves with a common agreement that they would "shoot to kill in the event of any attack, however slight."

Darrow built the Sweets’ defense around the 14th Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause, which said all Americans, regardless of race, are entitled to the same protection. Also key to the defense was the “castle doctrine,” which affirms that people have the right to use deadly force to defend their home from an intruder.

Darrow said that a "psychology of fear" led to the attacked African Americans to defend themselves. Breiner, the man who had been fatally shot, “was not an innocent man," Darrow said. "If his blood is on the head of anybody, it is on the head of the Police Department" for not doing more to stop the mob.

The Free Press reported Nov. 22, 1925, that throughout the trial, a typical day saw "all seats are occupied, and a half hundred men and women are standing in back. At the doors, another group stands on its toes and cranes its necks in an effort to see and hear what is going on. … Few cases in the history of Detroit have attracted more attention. An hour before the courtroom is opened (on trial) mornings, people begin to assemble, intent on getting favorable seats, and by the time the session opens, the crowd fills the corridor until it is impossible to get through. When the doors are opened, there is a forward rush, comparable to the maneuvers of a football team."

He said, she said; white said, Black said

Throughout the trial, the courtroom was packed with spectators, most of whom were African American. The State called 40-some witnesses, and they each were met by tough cross-examination by Darrow, who got some to admit that they did not want Black people living in their neighborhood.

Inspector Norton M. Schuknecht testified that there were 10 patrolmen posted around the house. "Their presence there, he said, was purely precautionary, and their orders were to prevent any breach of the peace and to protect Dr. Sweet's home," the Free Press wrote Nov. 6, 1925. "I informed the men before we left the station that Dr. Sweet would be permitted to occupy his house, even if it took every man in the department to protect him," Schuknecht testified. He went on to state that, though there was a large crowd gathered in front of the house, "everything was quiet." He then claimed that "before the shots were fired, he heard no shouting, saw nothing and did not see any armed men in the neighborhood.” Likewise, white neighbors also denied that there was more than two dozen people in the street at any given time, and none was armed or attacking the house.

It was the word of the Sweets and friends against that of the white mob and white officers.

In fact, it wasn't until two boys - 14-year-old George Suppas and 13-year-old Ulric Arthur - were called as witnesses for the prosecution that anyone said that people were actually throwing stones at the Sweet House. Arthur said the gunfire from inside the house followed the sound of the rocks shattering the glass. The eight adult white witnesses who followed the boys' testimony all continued to lie, saying that there was no disturbance, no one was throwing projectiles, and that there was no crowd.

On Sunday, Nov. 8, 1925, an off-day in court, Darrow spoke for two hours to 1,500 Black Detroiters at the St. Antoine YMCA, which was the “Black Y,” since African Americans were not allowed to use the main branch in this era of segregation.

"It is certain that a district built to house 5,000 Negroes will prove a bit too small to accommodate the 80,000 now in Detroit," Darrow told the crowd. "Obviously, they have to live somewhere. If they move into white neighborhoods, they depreciate property values. That is true, and I confess I don't know what can be done about it. ... You have a long, hard road to travel, an arduous foe to fight, and that foe is prejudiced."

The defense began presenting its case on Nov. 16, 1925, and Hays opened their argument.

"Self-defense is a necessary feature of our organized society," Hays told the jury. "It is the dearest right of a free man. Anything less than the right to use the fullest measure of protection when home and life are threatened would be contrary to human nature. No civilized society could survive without the right of self-defense. But, however valuable that right may be to a powerful man in the high classes of society, it is essential to the humble citizen, and particularly to one who is subject to prejudice because he differs in race, creed or color from the ruling class. ... Our defense is based upon a sacred ancient right, that of protection of home and life."

The defense called Black witnesses to testify, with some saying that the crowd ranged from 1,000 to 1,500 in the area around the home on the night of the shooting, and that the crowd was shouting, "Kill the Negro" among other aggressive threats, including those using the N-word. Philip Adler, a journalist whose race was not reported in the newspapers, testified that the crowd was between 300 and 400. Other witnesses called by the defense put the number of the mob at a more modest "several hundred." Defense witnesses said it was simply “a human sea” containing thousands. This countered the prosecution's witnesses, who had testified, under oath, that there was no mob at the Sweet House on the night of the shooting. None would be charged with perjury.

Adler, the newspaperman, also testified that "the people on Garland seemed of the residential type, but the people on Charlevoix were more like people prepared for something." When asked whether he had heard any conversation on the street, Adler replied, "Yes, I heard someone say, 'A Negro family has moved in here, and we're going to get them out.'"

Charles Schauffner, a Black man who lived at 1730 Seminole, testified that he drove through the area of the Sweet House in the wake of the shooting, and the mob stopped his car, "jumped on the running boards, tore the top to pieces with their hands. My wife pleaded with them. They said, 'Get out of this neighborhood - we'll give you three minutes to get out." Schauffner also said that he was punched.

The defense also went over the previous mob attacks against Black Detroiters that led up to the incident at the Sweets'. This, they argued, was necessary to explain the state of mind that the occupants of the Sweet House were in. Prosecutor Toms repeatedly objected to these stories, maintaining they had no bearing on the case. Judge Murphy disagreed.

Dr. Sweet takes the stand

The defense called Dr. Sweet to testify Nov. 18-19, waving his right against self-incrimination.

Sweet "showed the fright, the hysteria, the bedlam" of that night, the Free Press reported Nov. 20, 1925, of "fear looking out on surging figures in the night and thinking of Black men hanging by their throats."

Sweet admitted on the stand to giving a false statement to police the night of the attack. When asked why he had lied, Dr. Sweet said, "I'm under oath now. I was very excited then, and I was afraid that what I said might be misinterpreted." But what he lied about was seemingly minor: He had told police that he had gone to his bedroom to lie down that night because his nerves were undone by the mob outside. However, his untruthfulness was mainly used by the prosecution to attempt to tarnish his character and account of what really had happened. Dr. Sweet also refused to admit that the shot that had killed Breiner had come from inside his house; it was possible, he said, that the man had been killed by "friendly" fire from someone else in the mob.

Sweet gave the following account during his testimony on Nov. 19, 1925. The quote below is the words of the Free Press, but does include direct quotes from Dr. Sweet:

“Dr. Sweet said he arrived home between 4 and 5 o'clock the afternoon of the shooting. His wife started to prepare dinner, but she never got it finished. After a while, he said, he and his friends started to play cards. It was while they were at the card table, he said, that a missile landed on the roof of the house. It was 'a missile,' he said, 'which must have had 3 or 4 pounds’ pressure behind it.' One man in the house ran to a front window. Sweet said he went to a window facing Charlevoix Street. In the corner schoolyard, he said, he could see a 'great crowd' of people. The Negro at the front window yelled, 'We had better get up. They're coming!' Sweet would not estimate the crowd in the schoolyard. He saw a policeman at the street intersection, he said, but he said he didn't think of calling on him for help. …

"He said he saw nothing of the two police officers which the prosecution claims were standing in the diagonal line of Sweet's vision as he looked out the window toward the school grounds. 'If they were there,' he said, 'I probably would not have noticed them. Police officers are ordinary sights. The mob was not. I saw the mob.'

"Sweet said it was the sound of a stone or some missile crashing on the roof" that started the panic. "Those in the house, he said, got up from the card table and scattered in all directions. After glancing out the window, Sweet said he went to a side door and locked it. As he did, he said he heard someone say, 'Go around to the front. We're going to the back and raise hell.' Then, he said, he went to the back door and saw that it was fastened. He turned out a bright light in the kitchen. Then he went upstairs, went to a closet and got out a pistol. ... He loaded the gun and put some extra bullets in his pocket. Then he went into the bedroom and threw himself on the bed. Through the 3 or 4 inches between the drawn curtain and the sill, he could see the crowd on the east side of Garland Avenue, he said. Rocks or some sort of missiles continued to pound on the roof, he said. He could not see who was throwing them. There might have been 200 or 300 people in the schoolyard, he finally estimated."

When Dr. Sweet's brother's automobile pulled up to the front of the house, Dr. Sweet said he went down to let him in, dropping the gun at that time. "I knew Davis, who was with my brother in the car, was a narcotics man and always was armed,” Dr. Sweet testified. “I thought his gun would be enough.”

Henry Sweet gave a statement in which he admitted firing twice - once into the air and once down at the crowd - "as he knelt shivering before an upstairs window, a victim of the psychological mob fear that Clarence Darrow, chief counsel for the defense, has claimed is inherent in the Black race," the Free Press reported Nov. 21, 1925.

Darrow said: “I know that if these defendants had been a white group defending themselves from a colored mob, they never would have been arrested or tried. My clients are charged with murder, but they are really charged with being Black.”

The case went to the jury Nov. 25, 1925. The all-white, all-male jury deliberated for 46 hours but could not reach a verdict. Judge Murphy declared a mistrial Nov. 27, 1925. Dr. Sweet and his companions were freed on bail.

In the winter of 1925, someone set the Sweet house on fire, but firefighters extinguished the blaze before major damage could be caused.

The retrial of Henry Sweet, who had later admitted that he had fired the shot that killed Breiner, began on April 19, 1926. Again, it would see an all-white, all-male jury. Darrow once again led the defense, delivering a seven-hour closing argument on May 11, 1926, in which he said, "I ask you, gentlemen, on behalf of the progress and understanding of the human race that you return a verdict of not guilt.”

While it took Darrow seven hours to deliver his closing argument, it took this jury only four to find Henry Sweet not guilty.

On July 21, 1927 - nearly two years after the mob descended on the Sweet House - Toms, the prosecutor, asked for the charges against all 11 to be dismissed.

“This is a story about African Americans standing up against this incredible form of segregation and racism,” author Kevin Boyle told Bridge Michigan for a Sept. 17, 2019, article. Boyle wrote a 2001 book about the case, “Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age,” which won the National Book Award for nonfiction and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. “It’s the most enduring form of segregation in America – the segregation of neighborhoods, and (he) stood up against it.”

But following the acquittals, Dr. Sweet would be revisited by more sorrow.

Further tragedies

The Sweets’ daughter, Iva, died of tuberculosis, shortly after her second birthday. She had caught it from her mother, who is believed to have contracted it during her time in the Wayne County Jail on the charges stemming from the mob incident. Gladys Sweet died Nov. 10, 1928, at their home on Garland Street. She was just 27 years old.

Following the death of his wife, Dr. Sweet attempted to sell the home, but after being unable to find a buyer, he moved back in. He would live there until 1944, when he finally sold it.

Dr. Sweet had returned to his medical practice after the trial, and went on to co-found Good Samaritan Hospital in Detroit. He ran for political office twice, as a Republican candidate for the state Senate in 1934 and as a Democrat for Congress in 1950. Both attempts were unsuccessful.

Sweet "had lost the family he was so determined to provide a home for," the Free Press' Neal Rubin noted in a Sept. 7, 2025, column. "He began to drink and smoke. There were two more marriages, and each ended with ugly accusations of abuse."

On March 19, 1960, Dr. Sweet shot himself with a .32 caliber in the bedroom of his home at 1700 Chene St. Newspaper accounts at the time said he was "arthritic and despondent." Rather than draw out his illness, he committed suicide. He was 64. His funeral was held at St. Paul's A.M.E. Church, at 2260 Hunt, and he was interred in his native Bartow, Fla.

“One thing this story illustrates is that the American story of civil rights, as it’s taught, is always about triumph. People do brave things and better things come of it,” Boyle, the author, told Bridge Michigan for the Sept. 17, 2019, article. “But it can come with a great burden. It’s not easy to risk your life for something. I think Dr. Sweet suffered under the weight and cost of that.”

Meanwhile, the Sweet House was bought by Herbert and Inez Baxter, a Black family, in 1958 for $10,000. Herbert Baxter had not only been a patient of Dr. Sweet's, but was his dry cleaner. Recognizing the importance of the house, the Baxters set out to preserve it, ensuring it would keep the Sweet story alive for generations to come.

Recognizing a civil rights landmark

In 1975, the Sweet House was made a Michigan Historic Site, and 10 years later, in 1985, the Sweet House was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Almost 20 years later, on July 22, 2004, the house finally received a state historical site marker, a push led by Daniel Baxter, Herbert and Inez Baxter’s son, who had grown up in the house and continued to maintain it after he grew up and moved out.

In 2018, the City of Detroit received a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Interior through the African-American Civil Rights program of the National Park Service’s Historic Preservation Fund to rehab the home. The project also was awarded $50,000 from Amazon for the project four years later. The renovations would allow the house to be opened as a museum dedicated to the Sweets and their role in the fight for equality and civil rights. In 2020, Daniel Baxter donated the house to the Dr. Ossian H. Sweet Foundation, of which Baxter is the president and CEO. The foundation is dedicated to promoting diversity and inclusion through community education and programming. The restoration of the Sweet House began in 2022, with the goal of having it completed within three years, in order to be in time for the 100th anniversary of the mob attack.

In October 2024, the Wayne County Board of Commissioners approved grant funding of $226,952 to help with renovations, such as carpentry, structural preservation, painting, plumbing and electrical. The money came from the county's portion of the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds program, part of the federal American Rescue Plan Act funding allocated to help cities recover from the economic fallout caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There are still Detroiters that drive past and are not aware of what took place here,” Baxter told Bridge Michigan for the Sept. 17, 2019, article. “It’s all about uncovering this story and putting it in its proper place in American history.”

On Aug. 13, 2025, Mayor Mike Duggan, the Baxter family and members of the community gathered next door to the Sweet House to dedicate a new city park named the Dr. Ossian Sweet Memorial Park. Among those in attendance at the dedication was Jackie Spotts, Dr. Sweet's niece. "Dr. Sweet fought each and every day that he could for civil rights - he never stopped," Spotts said, recounting how the doctor recited the Emancipation Proclamation each year to a crowd.

The park was created using $1 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding. It features memorial trees to honor the 11 people in the home the night the mob attacked. There also is an oak tree memorializing young Iva. The City also is renovating three vacant homes across the street from the Sweet Home to extend the landscape honoring the Sweet family.

Sweet reportedly had told the Baxters that "I never should have bought that damned house," but as Rubin noted in his Sept. 7, 2025, column about the 100th anniversary of the incident. Sweet’s “own life would have been better, certainly, and his baby might have had a chance to grow up, (but) chances are someone else's castle would have become the legal battleground."