took him out to the cemetery and they said go around to the back gate. He pulled his pistol out and made them open the door. A few years later his wife died, and the same thing happened. They still wouldnât let him in. He pulled his pistol out. His name was Dr. Ossian Sweet . 45
Many of the early stories of Negroes with guns leave us wondering how the lives of those people turned out. This becomes easier to track over time. For Ossian Sweet, we know that after Gladys died of tuberculosis at twenty-seven. Ossian went on to enjoy a period of financial success. He actually moved in to the Garland Avenue bungalow and lived there in relative peace for more than twenty-five years. Two more marriages ended in divorce, and he pursued failed campaigns for state senate, US Congress, and the presidency of the Detroit NAACP.
By the 1950s, friends observed that he was slowing. Some commented that his countenance was darker. He seemed haunted by loss and trauma. And on March 20, 1960, as the modern civil-rights movement was unfolding toward great promise, Ossian Sweet picked up a pistol and shot himself in the head. 46
Sweetâs death by his own hand conjures the modern debate about the multiple hazards of firearms and perhaps even a parable about those who live by the gun. His suicide underscores what we have long known, that the majority of firearms deaths in our exceptionally armed society are suicides, with many of those coming from the population of older men.
The violent final episode of Ossian Sweetâs life both complicates and sharpens our sense of the black tradition of arms. It alters our assessment of the hero worship and hyperbole that surrounded Sweet after the shooting at Garland. We wonder now how much the public adulation obscured the anguish and trauma that follows any use of deadly force? How did the event change Ossian Sweet? Without it, would he have been the same man who carried a gun to the funerals of his wife and his child? And what about the thousands of people who flocked into churches to cheer Ossian and Gladys, to cheer an act of violence and bloodshed? Yes, they were celebrating a kind of triumph. But the celebrations elided the full imagery of flesh ripped open by lead and the life-altering trauma it caused for the dusky heroes of Garland Avenue.
Fuller consideration of the black tradition of arms evokes similar themes. It happens whenever we celebrate heroes who fight essential battles. And perhaps celebration is the wrong way to think about what we do here. We celebrate the birthof a child. We celebrate the commitment of newlyweds, and the enduring love and patience of a golden anniversary. There is a plain difference between those things and what legions of black folk celebrated in the Sweet case.
We are happy that Sweet survived and we relish the symbolism of his fight. We might even broadly embrace the principle of armed self-defense as a fundamental right and an important private resource. But ultimately we know that shooting someone in self-defense is next to the last thing anyone wants to do. Yes, it is better than dying under a murderous assault. But it is a deeply traumatic thing that scars everyone involved. That bloody reality introduces an element of reserve against glib lessons or platitudes that might attach to unalloyed tales of heroic violence.
Ossian Sweet was not the black Leonidas. Of course, with enough detail, Leonidas himself surely would disappoint the legend. Ossian Sweet in the role of hero is similar. And that actually is better. Sweet was a brave and frightened and flawed man whose story leavens our sense of the black tradition of arms and brings us closer to the perspective that we need in order to consider its implications in the modern era.
Addington, Wendell. âSlave Insurrections in Texas.â Journal of Negro History (1950).
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2012).
Alexander, Shawn Leigh. An Army
Many of the early stories of Negroes with guns leave us wondering how the lives of those people turned out. This becomes easier to track over time. For Ossian Sweet, we know that after Gladys died of tuberculosis at twenty-seven. Ossian went on to enjoy a period of financial success. He actually moved in to the Garland Avenue bungalow and lived there in relative peace for more than twenty-five years. Two more marriages ended in divorce, and he pursued failed campaigns for state senate, US Congress, and the presidency of the Detroit NAACP.
By the 1950s, friends observed that he was slowing. Some commented that his countenance was darker. He seemed haunted by loss and trauma. And on March 20, 1960, as the modern civil-rights movement was unfolding toward great promise, Ossian Sweet picked up a pistol and shot himself in the head. 46
Sweetâs death by his own hand conjures the modern debate about the multiple hazards of firearms and perhaps even a parable about those who live by the gun. His suicide underscores what we have long known, that the majority of firearms deaths in our exceptionally armed society are suicides, with many of those coming from the population of older men.
The violent final episode of Ossian Sweetâs life both complicates and sharpens our sense of the black tradition of arms. It alters our assessment of the hero worship and hyperbole that surrounded Sweet after the shooting at Garland. We wonder now how much the public adulation obscured the anguish and trauma that follows any use of deadly force? How did the event change Ossian Sweet? Without it, would he have been the same man who carried a gun to the funerals of his wife and his child? And what about the thousands of people who flocked into churches to cheer Ossian and Gladys, to cheer an act of violence and bloodshed? Yes, they were celebrating a kind of triumph. But the celebrations elided the full imagery of flesh ripped open by lead and the life-altering trauma it caused for the dusky heroes of Garland Avenue.
Fuller consideration of the black tradition of arms evokes similar themes. It happens whenever we celebrate heroes who fight essential battles. And perhaps celebration is the wrong way to think about what we do here. We celebrate the birthof a child. We celebrate the commitment of newlyweds, and the enduring love and patience of a golden anniversary. There is a plain difference between those things and what legions of black folk celebrated in the Sweet case.
We are happy that Sweet survived and we relish the symbolism of his fight. We might even broadly embrace the principle of armed self-defense as a fundamental right and an important private resource. But ultimately we know that shooting someone in self-defense is next to the last thing anyone wants to do. Yes, it is better than dying under a murderous assault. But it is a deeply traumatic thing that scars everyone involved. That bloody reality introduces an element of reserve against glib lessons or platitudes that might attach to unalloyed tales of heroic violence.
Ossian Sweet was not the black Leonidas. Of course, with enough detail, Leonidas himself surely would disappoint the legend. Ossian Sweet in the role of hero is similar. And that actually is better. Sweet was a brave and frightened and flawed man whose story leavens our sense of the black tradition of arms and brings us closer to the perspective that we need in order to consider its implications in the modern era.
Addington, Wendell. âSlave Insurrections in Texas.â Journal of Negro History (1950).
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2012).
Alexander, Shawn Leigh. An Army
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