Clarence Darrow
Probably the most celebrated American lawyer of the 20th century, Clarence Darrow worked as defense counsel in many widely publicized trials. He was notable as a defender of the underdog and civil rights. He was an distinguished speaker on agnosticism, liberalism, freethought and humanism.
Clarence Darrow was born on April 18, 1857, near Kinsman, Ohio. He attended Allegheny College and the University of Michigan briefly before being admitted to the Ohio bar in 1878 at the age of 21. In 1887 he moved to Chicago, where he soon was appointed city corporation counsel and later the general attorney for the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad. He resigned this position in 1895 to defend Eugene V. Debs, president of the American Railway Union, and other union leaders who had been arrested on a federal charge of contempt of court over difficulties arising out of the Pullman strike of 1894. Through this trial Darrow established a national reputation as a labor and criminal lawyer.
In 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him an arbitrator in the Pennsylvania anthracite coal strike. In 1907 he secured the acquittal of labor organizer William D. "Big Bill" Haywood for the murder of former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg. After World War I he defended war protesters charged with violating state sedition laws.
The two most famous trials in which he participated took place in the 1920s. The first of these trials was the notorious Leopold-Loeb murder case of 1924. He saved Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb from execution--but not from prison--for the murder of 14-year-old Robert Franks. In July 1925 Darrow defended high school teacher John T. Scopes, who was charged with violating Tennessee law by teaching evolution. The prosecuting attorney in this famous "monkey trial" was William Jennings Bryan. Bryan died a few days after the trial.
In his writings and speeches Darrow promoted freedom of expression and the closed shop for unions. He opposed capital punishment and Prohibition. Once, when asked his attitude toward religion, Darrow replied: "I feel as I always have, that the earth is the home and the only home of man, and I am convinced that whatever he is to get out of his existence he must get while he is here." At another time, Darrow said: "I am an Agnostic because I am not afraid to think. I am not afraid of any god in the universe who would send me or any other man or woman to hell. If there were such a being, he would not be a god; he would be a devil."
He gained notoriety for moving, 11 hour closing arguments presented without notes. He made his cases important by tying the fate of one lonely persecuted outcast into the entire notion of America and humanity and freedom - that we might challenge our fears and actually try to live the dreams of equality by realizing that we are all brothers.
It is interesting to note that many of the sources lauding Mr. Darrow and his legal prowness do not make mention of the Eastland criminal trial, in which he successfully defended Joseph M. Erickson, chief engineer. While it is unfair to levy the full responsibility for the disaster on Erickson's shoulders, certainly gross negligence and mismanagement occurred, and Darrow's skills were used to secure a certain travesty of justice.
His fame did not decline over the years: in the 1970s his life was the subject of a one-man stage production starring Henry Fonda. He died in Chicago on March 13, 1938.
