Clarence Darrow

-Joe Springer Hr. 2 APUSH

-Facts
1. Clarence Darrow was one of the main lawyers in the Scopes trial,
otherwise known as the Monkey trial, and defended the teacher who
was put on trial for teaching evolutionary teachings that differed from
the Roman Catholic bible. The case was a critical turning point in the
United States' creation-evolution controversy and Darrow helped
separate Religion from Justice.
2. Darrow was also a Lawyer in the Leopold-Loeb case and defended
two teens that had kidnapped a younger boy. Darrow was very against
the death penalty and due to his successful trial, he was able to keep
the boys from it. His reform led to great changes in the death penalty
and minors debate.
3. “Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas.
So does whiskey.” Clarence Darrow said this during his closing
argument of the Scopes Trial. It showed his strong feelings toward the
disbelief of the Catholic Religion.
4. Father was a coffin maker. When Darrow was growing up he was
around death a lot and came to fear it, historians suggest it is why he
led the crusade agaisnt capitol punishment
5. Darrow Mixed poetry and law to form a unique kind of speech. This
law form revolutionized legal trials as more and more lawyers started
picking up his speech tactics. To this day many lawyers still study his
techniques. However, No one ever mastered the art as Darrow did.
6. Darrow defended Grace Fortescue who was charged with murder of
another local Hawaiian man. Darrow argued the murder as an act of
“honor killing” arguing that Fortescue had killed the man in an act of
protecting her sister’s honor, whom the man had killed weeks before.
The jury ended it in a mistrial, and news spread inward of this “honor
killing” and captivated the nation with the laws new spin on things.
7. Darrow also was a lawyer in the Ossian Sweet trials in which A white
mob in Detroit attempted to drive a black family out of the home they
had purchased in a white neighborhood. In the struggle, a white man
was killed, and the eleven blacks in the house were arrested and
charged with murder. Darrow’s actions in the case were seen as
landmarks in the civil rights movement.
 8. Darrow began his career as a lawyer in Youngstown, Ohio, where he
was first admitted to the profession. He subsequently moved to
Chicago, Illinois, where he soon became a corporate lawyer for the
railroad company. His next move was to "cross the tracks," when he
switched sides to represent Eugene V. Debs, the leader of the
American Railway Union in the Pullman Strike of 1894. Darrow had
conscientiously resigned his corporate position in order to represent
Debs, making a substantial financial sacrifice in order to do this.
9. Darrow was the defense of the McNamara brothers, who were
charged with dynamiting the Los Angeles Times building during the
bitter struggle over the open shop in Southern California, resulting in
the deaths of 21 employees. Darrow perceived right away that the
McNamara brothers were guilty, but he planned to celebrate them as
heroes in the struggle of the workers against oppression and have
them acquitted by bribed jurors. He was later found guilty of bribing
the jury himself, and was dropped from the labor unions list of
preferred attorneys, leading him to never be a labor lawyer again.
10. As a young lawyer, Darrow had been impressed by the book Our
Penal Machinery and Its Victims by John Peter Altgeld. The two men
became close friends and shared a belief that the United States
criminal system favored the rich over the poor. Later Altgeld was
elected governor of Illinois and controversially pardoned several men
convicted after the Haymarket Bombing.

Sources:

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/DARESY
.HTM

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/monkeytrial/peopleevents/
p_darrow.html

“Story of my Life” Autobiography by Clarence Darrow

DBQ ~

Quote:
“If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public
school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next
year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next
session you may ban books and the newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against
Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the
minds of men. If you can do one you can do the other. Ignorance and fanaticism is ever
busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public
school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lectures, the
magazines, the books, the newspapers. After while, your honor, it is the setting of man
against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are
marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted
fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture
to the human mind.” –Clarence Darrow

This quote by Clarence Darrow depicts his strong feelings toward the Catholic Religion
which gained much fame during the Scopes Trial.

1931 cartoon suggesting that the alleged rape of Thalia Massie

was part of a larger pattern of native violence against white women.
This cartoon shows how the rest of the country was in deep worry that the
Scopes trial would escalate even further from its Tennessee standpoint.
Thanks to people like Clarence Darrow it was settled in a reasonable
manner.