The story of Ossian Sweet greatly characterized Detroit’s racial tensions. Sweet was a black physician who moved to Detroit in 1921 to begin his practice. Sweet was born and raised in a small town in Florida. Sweet’s father, Henry Sweet, was a former slave and upon gaining freedom, bought a small farmhouse where Ossian Sweet and his nine other siblings were raised. At the age of five, Sweet witnessed the lynching of a black teenager. During Sweet’s testimony, he recounted the traumatizing event by describing the smell of kerosene and the screams of the victim who was being burned at the stake. This event later proved to be vital in explaining Sweet’s mindset while defending his family from the mob. As a medical student at Howard University,