Ossian Sweet
Ossian Sweet is the protagonist and central character of the story. He is an African American man who migrated from the rural South to the urban North. Ossian is a doctor who began enjoying the fruits of the middle class. As a result, in 1925 he makes the decision to purchase a nice home in a completely white neighborhood in Detroit, Michigan.
Ossian's decision takes him from Black Bottom, a poverty-stricken neighborhood populated by neighbors sharing not just his skin color, but his background as the grandson of a slave. The move puts him in direct conflict with neighbors who share nothing with him. Almost immediately, he becomes the target of racial terrorism which eventually explodes into mob violence.
It is this organized mob attacking Ossian and his family inside their own home that erupts into a fatal encounter. In an act of defense of his home that would many decades become the defense justifying George Zimmerman's murder of Trayvon Martin–the legal philosophy of standing your ground while protecting your castle–Ossian would ironically become the participant put on trial. The narrative is predominantly about that legal nightmare.
Clarence Darrow
Over the course of his legendary career as a lawyer, Clarence Darrow took part in at least three different "Trials of the Century." Ironically, Darrow's clients in those celebrated trials usually lost their cases. This less-than-stellar record was typified not by poor skills on Darrow's part, but rather because he infamously took on notorious clients.
Such is the case with Ossian Sweet. A white man himself, Darrow takes the unusual strategy of populating the jury with fellow white males. The difference is that the jurors are mostly the offspring of immigrants who were also targets of terrorist threats by members of the Ku Klux Klan which was growing in membership and power in Detroit.
Darrow's strategy helps to get a mistrial declared in the trial of Ossian. He then takes the case of Ossian's brother, Henry, for murder. The acquittal he wins in Henry Sweet's case essentially makes retrying Ossian pointless.
Norton Schuknecht
Norton Schuknecht is an inspector within the Detroit Police Department. Most importantly, he is commander in charge of the precinct in the neighborhood into which Ossian Sweet moves. This position naturally endows him with the kind of respect which powers influence.
Schuknecht's sympathizes not with the target of racial hatred and extreme prejudice and actual criminal activity. Instead, his sympathies align with the other residents who share his skin color. When the mob attacks the Sweet household, he decides to exercise the influence endowed by his powerful position to assist the aggressors rather than their vulnerable targets.
His story resonates with 21st-century revisionism of mob violence. Schuknecht will also use the trust instilled in law enforcement to downplay the size, violence, and threat posed to the Sweet family by the mob. Throughout the subsequent trials he will stick to his version that the events of the night were not as serious as portrayed.
