This column by Neal Rubin originally appeared in the Free Press on Nov. 29, 1992. Starting Sept. 7, the Dr. Ossian H. Sweet Foundation — founded by Daniel Baxter, now 59, and interviewed for this piece — will hold a three-day commemoration 100 years after a mob tormented Ossian Sweet and his family after purchasing a home in a white neighborhood.

Until he left home, the window was Daniel Baxter's, a little dormer in a tiny bedroom above an apron of green shingles. When he looked through it, he could see his heritage.

"Plenty of times," says Baxter, 27. "Plenty of times, I'd sit and try to visualize an ocean of hate."

He knew it was impossible, recreating the dread and fury of that September night in 1925. But he also knew it was vital that he try. His parents pay the taxes on the home

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