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
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Directed by Daniel F. Pfeffer · Written & executive produced by Andrew R. Colom
Own the full film →The true story
Ossian Sweet — born in Bartow, Florida, trained at Howard, 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.
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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
They can try to make us miserable and scare us but they can't make us leave.
A rock blasts through the window across from their bed, spreading glass all over the room. The mob outside breaks into cheers.
The mob outside (O.S.)
Leave Garland now! Leave Garland now!
Ossian jumps to the other side of the bed and hides behind it. Gladys stands in shock.
Board and frame · Gladys alone in the bedroom
Board and frame · After the police leave
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 it shot by shot before anyone rolled a camera — the drive down Garland, the boxes still taped shut, the neighbours gathering, the argument on the porch. The numbers are the real shot codes off the boards.
"We can protect ourselves in our own home. That's the law."Henry Sweet · Scene 6
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.
Why it still matters
2905 Garland was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. It has since been restored by the Dr. Ossian H. Sweet Foundation 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.
The film has screened alongside panels, classrooms, and community conversations across Detroit, including the centennial staging of The Ossian Sweet Story: 100 Years of Courage in September 2025.
If you want the film for a screening, a class, or an event, write to info@storyarc.com.
Twenty minutes. One night. One house.
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