In the summer of 1925, Dr. Ossian Sweet, his wife, Gladys, and nine friends and relatives were arrested for the death of a neighbor while defending their recently bought home against a hostile crowd that had gathered outside. The issue for many was one of racial integration. As one NAACP press release stated, “If in Detroit the Negro is not upheld in the right to defend his home against eviction at the hands of a riotous mob, then no decent Negro home anywhere in the United States will be secure.” Supported by the National Association eor the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and other civil rights groups, the Sweets declared their innocence with a powerful defense of equal property rights. Participating in their trial were figures of major national significance. Judge Frank Murphy, later mayor of Detroit and governor of Michigan, presided over the case. Clarence Darrow, one of the greatest attorneys in American history, led the defense team, and Arthur Garfield Hays, another prominent liberal lawyer, assisted him. Local and national reporters covered the trial for national and African-American newspapers as the entire country followed the proceedings.
Like many other northern cities, Detroit experienced the growth of racial conflict in the years during and after World War I. Chicago, St. Louis, Washington, D. C., and Tulsa had race riots during those years. In Detroit, police brutality against African-American men and small housing riots had left much of the city with a tenuous racial peace. Restrictive real estate covenants and common banking practices, even when not enforced by legal segregation, kept most African Americans from buying houses in mostly white neighborhoods. The habits of racial separation did the rest. The early 1920s saw the revival of the Ku Kiux Klan, with a particularly strong contingent in suburban Detroit. While the Klan spent much of its venom on immigrant workers and Catholics, it also promoted the ideology of white supremacy and enforced its ideas through collective violence. In the mayoral election of 1924, Klan member Charles S. Bowles almost won as a write-in candidate. He was narrowly defeated after the city disqualified 15,000 ballots.
The African-American community in Detroit numbered about 80,000 in 1920. Most African Americans were relatively recent migrants. Centered for the most part on the near east side in the area called Paradise Valley, the community opened Dunbar Hospital, the first black facility in the city, and housed businesses that catered primarily to the migrants. The Detroit Independent provided news to black Detroiters, and the local NAACP, United Negro Improvement Association, and the Detroit Urban League played major roles in advocating for African-American causes.
Ossian Sweet, an African-American doctor from Florida, moved with his family to Detroit in 1924, seeking to escape the segregated South by moving to the Motor City. Gladys Mitchell Sweet, his wife, came from one of the oldest African-American families in Detroit, and her elite connections aided her husband in establishing a practice in the city. After their move, the Sweets became part of the expanding community, joining elite St. Matthews Episcopal Church and other local civil rights organizations.
As a follower of Marcus Garvey, Ossian Sweet had little patience for racial accommodation and wanted to take the lead in integrating the city. In June 1925, he put a sizable down payment on a house in the largely immigrant northeast sector of the city. Despite racial bars, Sweet was able to buy a modest home on Garland and Charlevoix, a house previously owned by an interracial couple. The neighborhood, however, had not known that the previous owner was African American, and so the Sweets’ purchase of the house raised the ire of some local homeowners. The same year, two other African Americans in Detroit had been removed from their homes in all-white neighborhoods. The homeowners around Waterworks Park had similar aims.
For that reason, when the Sweets moved into their new home, they brought not only two vans of furniture but a generous supply of food, guns, and ammunition, the elements of a siege. Within days the Waterworks Improvement Association, a neighborhood group, set out to evict the Sweets from their home, if necessary through violence. On September 8, 1925, the Sweets moved into their home. They requested police protection, a move that had ambiguous results. The following evening, a white mob had gathered outside the Sweet house and began throwing stones, first at those arriving and then at the house itself. From the house and from police positions outside the home shots were fired. Leo Breiner was killed, and another man, Erik Halberg, was wounded.
Promptly taken into police custody, all 11 of those in the Sweet home, including Gladys Sweet, were arrested for murder. The trial itself juxtaposed the Sweets, who came from the respectable black professional class, with their neighbors, upwardly mobile Polish and Hungarian immigrants and their children. Darrow’s defense team played on the differences of education and respectability between the Sweets and the immigrant mob. In addition, they suggested how the Sweets’ state of mind, inflamed by the history of violence directed against African Americans, determined their course of action. Threatened by an angry mob, Sweet and his compatriots defended their rights as citizens and property owners to the same liberties as whites. The first trial of all 11 defendants ended with a hung jury after 46 hours of deliberations. Following the outcome, the defense chose to try the defendants individually. Henry Sweet, Ossian’s brother, was tried first, as the only defendant to admit he fired a gun. After only four hours of deliberation, an all-white jury acquitted Henry Sweet and, by implication, all the other defendants. While the Sweet case did not settle the racial troubles of Detroit, the acquittal of the Sweets’ actions in defense of their property led the way to further housing integration and improved race relations in the city.
See also NATIVISM; RACE AND RACIAL CONFLICT.
Further reading: Kevin Boyle, The Arc of J-ustice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age (New York: Henry Holt, 2004); Victoria W. Wolcott, Remaking Respectability: African American Women in Interwar Detroit (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
Taft, William Howard (1857-1930) 27th U. S. president, chief justice of the Supreme Court Often referred to as the “Reluctant President,” William Howard Taft was the 27th president of the United States. Taft was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on September 15, 1857. Taft’s father was himself a politician and served as secretary of war and attorney general under Ulysses S. Grant. Growing up and as a young man, Taft preferred law to politics. He attended Yale University and graduated in 1878. He then attended Cincinnati Law School and joined the bar in 1880. For the next decade, Taft practiced law in Cincinnati. A large man, 6 feet, 4 inches tall, he weighed more than 300 pounds during his presidency. He was easygoing and hardworking. He made friends easily and quickly earned a reputation for honesty and personal morality. Taft also preferred quiet and stability, tended to procrastinate, and lacked the ability to inspire or motivate audiences. At a time when political scandals and corruption were common, Taft’s reputation enabled him to win appointment to increasingly important judicial positions and the support of Ohio’s Republican Party
Taft’s first important break came in 1887, when, at the age of 29, he was appointed to the Ohio superior court. From the early days of his professional career, Taft’s goal was to become a member of the U. S. Supreme Court. Though heavily involved in the Ohio Republican Party, he had little interest in running for political office. Taft served on the U. S. Sixth Court of Appeals between 1892 and 1900. During that time, his judicial rulings were mixed. On several occasions, he ruled against organized labor, upholding a lower court injunction against a railroad strike and a ruling declaring secondary boycotts illegal. On the other hand, Taft supported in principle the right of workers to join unions and to conduct strikes.
Though Taft was more comfortable in the courtroom, his wife, Helen Herron, encouraged him to seek political office. Taft’s political career began in 1900 when President
William McKinley appointed him to oversee the formation of a government in the Philippines and named Taft its first civil governor a year later. During his tenure, Taft created an efficient administration, free from corruption. As civil governor, he established a system of public education and convinced the Catholic Church to sell small plots of land to Filipino farmers. Largely as a result of his success, President Theodore Roosevelt chose Taft to be his secretary of war in 1904. Between 1904 and 1908, he and Roosevelt became strong political allies. When Roosevelt, nearing the end of his second term in office, decided not to seek reelection, he chose Taft to be his successor. Taft was initially reluctant; but at the urging of his wife, family members, and supporters, he agreed to seek the Republican nomination, which he easily won. In the general election, Taft faced Democrat William Jennings Bryan. During the presidential campaign, Taft promised to adhere to the policies established by the popular Roosevelt. Taft defeated Bryan, winning the popular vote 7,679,114 to 6,410,665 and the Electoral College vote 321 to 162.
During his only term in office, Taft was largely ineffective and personally very unhappy. From the outset, Taft aligned himself with the Republican Party’s conservative Old Guard. Led by Speaker of the House Joseph Cannon, the Old Guard opposed progressives in their party who wanted the federal government to play a more active role in society. Unlike Roosevelt, Taft did not believe in using the power of the presidency or the federal government to push legislative reforms or achieve social equality. Still, while in office, Taft signed several significant pieces of legislation, including the Mann-Elkins Act, which increased railroad regulation, and furthered Roosevelt’s trust-busting agenda by continuing Justice Department investigations of antitrust violations. At the same time, divisions began to emerge in the Republican Party as early as 1909 during the debate over the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act. Wisconsin senator Robert La Follette and other
William Howard Taft (Library of Congress) midwesterners were vehemently opposed to the tariff, because they believed that it kept prices artificially high and benefited primarily large corporations and eastern financial markets. When Taft called for a special session of Congress to deal with tariffs, he originally intended to have them lowered. However, the final version of the Payne-Aldrich Tariff did the exact opposite. When Taft signed the tariff, he created a split in the party.
Between 1909 and 1911 a series of controversies deepened the divide between progressives and conservatives in the Republican ranks. In 1909 Taft fired the progressive head of the U. S. Forest Service and long-time Roosevelt supporter, Gifford Pinchot, after he disagreed with Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger. Hoping to galvanize progressive opposition to Taft and the Old Guard, Pinchot had deliberately provoked a conflict. His firing angered Roosevelt and convinced many progressives of the need to support a different candidate in the 1912 election. In August 1910, Roosevelt delivered a speech criticizing Taft and laying out the idea of the New Nationalism, which provided the basis for his 1912 presidential campaign.
Finally, in the 1910 elections, Taft and the Old Guard Republicans attempted to unseat or block the nominations of congressional progressives, convincing La Follette to form the National Progressive Republican League. As the popularity of the league grew and the intensity of La Follette’s attacks on Taft’s lack of leadership intensified, Taft and Roosevelt realized that the dissidents would be a force to be reckoned with in the election of 1912. Initially Roosevelt refused to publicly side with either Taft or the progressive dissidents, but Roosevelt soon announced that he would seek the Republican nomination. Taft felt personally betrayed by Roosevelt. Now being publicly attacked by his mentor, Taft refused to give in. He began touring the country, criticizing both Roosevelt and La Follette. In so doing, he secured the support of enough delegates to the 1912 Republican convention that he was able to defeat Roosevelt’s bid to win the nomination. Convinced that they could defeat Taft and the Democratic nominee, WooDROW Wilson, dissidents in the Republican Party formed the Progressive Party. At their convention in August 1912, they selected Roosevelt as their presidential nominee and California governor Hiram W. Johnson as their vice presidential candidate.
Taft attempted to rally the Republican Party’s conservative base in order to stave off defections to the Progressive Party, but his campaign failed to generate much enthusiasm. The election of 1912 was tightly contested. The Progressives hoped they could lure enough votes away from both parties to secure a victory. In the end, though Roosevelt easily outpolled Taft, the party failed to make significant inroads with Democratic voters. Wilson received 6,293,000 votes, Roosevelt 4,119,000, and Taft 3,484,000. The electoral vote was even more decisive with Wilson receiving 435 votes, Roosevelt 88, and Taft 8.
After his defeat in the 1912 election, Taft accepted a position teaching constitutional law at Yale University. During World War I, he served on the National War Labor Board. Following the war’s conclusion, he became a strong supporter of the League of Nations. In 1921, Taft realized his life-long dream when President Warren G. Harding appointed him chief justice of the Supreme Court. Taft served on the high court until his retirement in 1930. During his tenure as chief justice, he made important strides in modernizing the Court and improving its efficiency. Taft’s failing health forced him to retire from the Court in February 1930, and he died a month later.
See also dollar diplomacy.
Further reading: Judith Icke Anderson, William Howard Taft: An Intimate History (New York: Norton, 1981); Paolo Coletta, The Presidency of William Howard Taft. (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1973).
—Robert Gordon
Tarbell, Ida Minerva (1857-1944) reformer, journalist
Born in Erie County, Pennsylvania, in 1857, Ida Tarbell was one of the nation’s first influential female reporters. After studying biology and graduating from Allegheny College in 1880, Tarbell did not intend to become a journalist; but as she struggled to find work as a teacher, she began writing articles to support herself. Concerned that modern day political machines and laissez-faire capitalism were undermining traditional American values, Tarbell committed herself to rooting out and exposing corruption. In 1891 she moved to Paris, where she met S. S. McClure, future owner of McClure’s Magazine.
Tarbell joined the staff of McClure’s when it was created in 1894. Labeled MUCKRAKERS, she and other reform journalists Lincoln Steffens, Upton Sinclair, and Ray Stannard Baker turned their attention to the increasing power of corporations and corruption in government. Tarbell began an in-depth investigation of John D. Rockefeller, owner of the nation’s largest and most profitable corporation, Standard Oil. Between 1902 and 1904, Tarbell wrote a series of articles that exposed the lengths to which Rockefeller went to build and maintain his oil empire. Published in 1904 as The History of the Standard Oil Company, Tarbell’s expose outraged people throughout the country and contributed greatly to the 1911 Supreme Court decision to dismantle the company for its violation of the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act. It marked the first time federal antitrust laws had been enforced against an influential national corporation. Tarbell also became a staunch critic of the Ku KlUX Klan and the lynching of African Americans. In the pages of McClure’s, she spoke out against racism and lynching frequently and eloquently. In 1906, Tarbell, Steffens, Baker, and others left McClure’s to create the more radical journal, American Magazine, where she served as editor until its demise in 1915. Although Tarbell was reluctant to embrace the woman SUFFRAGE movement and held traditional views about the role of women in society inconsistent with her public career, she inspired an entire generation of female reporters and helped to change the shape of American public life.
Further reading: Kathleen Brady, Ida Tarbell: Portrait of a Muckraker (New York: Seaview/Putnam, 1984); Robert C. Kochersberger, More Than a Muckraker: Ida Tarbell’s Lifetime in Journalism (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994).
—Robert Gordon
World History
