Story ARC · Short film · 2020
Detroit · September 9, 1925
Dr. Ossian Sweet and his wife Gladys are spending their second night in a new home on an all-white street. Trapped inside by a violent mob, the family fractures over how to survive a night of racial terror, igniting one of the first fights against housing segregation in America.
Eleven people were inside that house. Hundreds were outside it. When the shooting stopped, every one of the eleven was charged with murder, and Clarence Darrow came to Detroit to defend them.
Based on true events
Official trailer
Directed by Daniel F. Pfeffer · Written & executive produced by Andrew R. Colom
Own the full film · $6.99 →The true story
Ossian Sweet, born in Bartow, Florida, trained at Howard and practicing medicine in Detroit's Black Bottom, buys the brick bungalow at 2905 Garland for $18,500.
Sweet, Gladys, and their one-year-old daughter Iva move in. Family and friends stay the night with them. A crowd is already on the corner.
Hundreds of white residents fill the street and the schoolyard across from the house. Stones come through the windows. Police stand by.
Shots are fired from an upstairs window. Leon Breiner, standing across the street, is killed. A second man is wounded.
All eleven people inside the house are arrested and charged with first-degree murder, including Gladys.
The NAACP hires Clarence Darrow. Judge Frank Murphy presides. The first trial ends in a hung jury.
An all-white jury acquits Henry Sweet. The charges against everyone else are dropped. The case becomes a landmark in the fight against housing segregation.
"It was terrifying and moving."Charlotte SheedyCharlotte Sheedy Literary Agency
Own the film
The complete 20-minute film, delivered through Gumroad. No subscription, no rental window, no algorithm deciding whether you get to see it.
$6.99One time. No rental window, no subscription.
Buy it for $6.99 →Secure checkout by Gumroad · Screening & classroom licensing: info@storyarc.com
From the film
Cast & crew
Official selections
Page · Board · Frame
The rock through the bedroom window was written, drawn, and shot years apart, by different hands, all trying to land the same second.
Int. Ossian Sweet bedroom, continuous
Gladys Sweet
Don't kid yourself: you bought this house to impress your NAACP friends, and to prove you were a big man, that you weren't afraid. But clearly you're terrified.
Ossian grabs Gladys and holds her wrists down at her side. She tries to jerk out of his grasp but he holds firm.
Their struggle is broken by a rock that blasts through the window across from their bed, spreading glass all over the room.
Gladys stands in shock. Ossian peers over at his wife and sees shards of glass stuck to her face.
Board and frame · Gladys alone in the bedroom
Board and frame · They lay next to each other without words
From the storyboards
Ana Novacic drew the film twice over: first as boards, then as the production design the camera actually pointed at.
Storyboards
Ana Novacic boarded the whole film before anyone rolled a camera. Her book runs fifty-five pages and a hundred and fifty-eight panels, start to finish. Forty-four of them are here, in the order she drew them, with her page numbers.
"They hate us because we let them. We never fight back, even when we can."Henry Sweet
Behind the scenes
Every room was dressed to 1925: wallpaper, lace, oil lamps, a police squad in wool coats in the heat of August. The film was shot in a real bungalow, in real Detroit neighborhoods.
The house today
2905 Garland went on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. The Dr. Ossian H. Sweet Foundation has since restored it to open to the public, and in August 2025 the city unveiled the Dr. Ossian Sweet Memorial Park beside it, a hundred years after the mob.
There is a sign in the park that asks Langston Hughes's question: what happens to a dream deferred? The marker out front gives the short answer. The film is the long one.
Ossian Sweet events · Detroit
On September 8, 1925, the Sweets moved in. A century to the day, chairs were set out on Garland and people sat down in front of that house to mark it. The next evening the film screened as part of The Ossian Sweet Story: 100 Years of Courage.
For a screening, a class, or an event of your own, write to info@storyarc.com.
Filmed at the centennial by Andrew R. Colom
Where else it has played
Museums, panels, church halls, school auditoriums. The film has spent five years in rooms where people already know the street name.
Twenty minutes. One night. One house.
Delivered instantly · Yours to keep forever
