In 1925, Dr. Ossian Sweet and his wife Gladys moved out of Detroit’s Black-only neighborhood, Black Bottom, into an all-white Detroit neighborhood. They wanted a better life for themselves and their infant daughter.

Ossian Sweet was afraid that they had made a dangerous decision.

They moved on September 8, 1925. The first night there were racist catcalls but nothing serious. The next evening a mob surrounded the new home as Sweet, his brothers, and others gathered again in the house. Ossian was prepared with guns as the mob attacked the house, but the police ignored pleas from the Sweets. A white man was killed. The police raided the Sweet home and arrested 12 people including Ossian Sweet, Gladys Atkinson Sweet, Ossian’s brothers, and friends.

This led to a historic trial that brought the renowned civil rights lawyer Clarence Darrow to Detroit.

Playwright D.L. Patrick takes a different view of these historic events and shifts the attention from Ossian Sweet to his wife, Gladys. Patrick’s title for the play is a good summary of yet another example of a woman not given her due, Eclipsed: The Sun, The Moon, and Gladys Atkinson Sweet.

Theatre Nova is presenting the world premiere of Patrick’s play. It’s an emotional, intimate look at a family that struggles to lead a better life and is trapped by the vile racism that is still a major mark of shame in America’s history.

It is Gladys who yearns for a better life in a better neighborhood for herself and Iva, her newborn daughter. Gladys was in her early 20s when she met Ossian. They were married in December of 1922. She traveled to Europe with Ossian who would further his medical studies at the University of Vienna. She settled into Paris. The city was a revelation to her—a city where black people were treated with the same respect as everyone else. It is her drive, her strength, her willingness to press forward that is at the center of Patrick’s play.

Eclipsed moves from vignettes covering personal lives to the historic events of the assault on 2905 Garland Avenue and the legal aftermath. Monologues directed at the audience give a wider view of events. Director Bryana Hall has assembled a fine cast. What really works for Hall is the sharp connection between Gladys and the other women who illuminate their power, which often gets lost in the fog of history. Playwright Patrick and director Hall put the emphasis where it counts.

The tight staging area at Theatre Nova gives productions there a special intimacy but this staging is a bit distracting and awkward. That’s a small complaint against the emotional power of the play.

Eclipsed features five women and one man. Ossian Sweet is mentioned often but never appears. Clarence Darrow, the country’s best-known lawyer, delivers another great defense but also never appears in this play. That’s a great act of settling a score and acknowledging the rights of women to be heard, understood, and equally appreciated.  And these women don’t always agree but they know who is the most burdened sex—and also, often the most central.

Princess Beyonce Jones has the difficult role of Gladys. She looks to the audience and begins to tell her story. Jones gives a star turn here. She embraces her dreamy memories of Paris and a kind of equality not known in the United States. Those emotions build as the play goes on, from the joy of having a new baby and a new home to the fright and horror of the assault on the house and the shooting. Jones gets it all, especially later in the play when Gladys is asked to travel the country to raise an outcry for justice and meets the NAACP’s representative Walter White. White, working for NAACP’s president James Weldon Johnson, promises support for the Sweet family from the leading civil rights organization in the country and tells her that money will be raised to hire Darrow to head the defense. But the disappointments, tragedies, and doubts are the heart of the play.

Dan Johnson gives an emotional performance as Walter White. White would go on to lead the NAACP and also write several best-selling books. White was a Black man with soft curly hair and blue eyes. As he says, they are a gift from his grandfather, William Henry Harrison (the U.S. president who died a month after being sworn in). White is an emotional man who could have passed for white and, like W.E.B. Du Bois, chose not to. Johnson presents Walter White as a dignified man with serious flaws.

CJ Williams gives a snappy performance as Gladys’ feisty and sometimes intrusive mother, Rosella Mitchell. Williams is a true matriarch, laying down the law and scoffing at other opinions, but is still a warm, loving mother for a troubled daughter.

Sylvia “Shelby” Bradley plays Dora Sweet, Ossian’s proud and haughty mother. Bradley puts on the airs, expertly portraying the divide between different classes within the Black community. She is an adoring mother and a skeptical mother-in-law.

Breon LaDawn plays Gladys' closest friend Edna. LaDawn brings the positive, hopeful Edna to life.

Emily Wilson-Tobin takes on two roles of women who both inspired Gladys and in some ways disappointed her. The first was Madame Curie whom she met briefly in Paris and the second is Ruby Darrow, Clarence Darrow’s much younger wife who prods Gladys to become a more ardent, liberated woman. Gladys sees the limitations of those words of wisdom in a racially divided society.

At a time when the U.S. government is trying to erase Black history, Eclipsed: The Sun, The Moon, and Gladys Atkinson Sweet makes a strong case for telling the full and real history, and not burying it to suit a particular political point of view.

Hugh Gallagher has written theater and film reviews over a 40-year newspaper career and was most recently the managing editor of the Observer & Eccentric Newspapers in suburban Detroit. 

Theatre Nova's presentation of "Eclipsed: The Sun, The Moon, and Gladys Atkinson Sweet" will continue through May 11 at 410 West Huron Street, Ann Arbor. For tickets, call 734-635-8450, or go to theatrenova.org.