there is suspicion, prejudice, hatred. And on the new battlefield, fighting a subtler foe, and one that may perhaps never be defeated, is Clarence Darrow, son of the Abolitionists.”
Black people would one day gain equality, Darrow predicted. He urged the jurors to help them make the journey.
“Do you think that these people, simply because their color is black, are to be forever kept as slaves of the white? Do you think that all the rights which you claim for yourselves are to be denied them?” he asked.
“I do not believe it … Oh no. There are colored people of intellect, and colored people of courage, and colored people who risk their fortunes and their lives for their independence,” he said. “You cannot get rid of them, gentlemen, they are here.…
“The world moves slowly, but it is forever grinding, and it grinds down injustice and wrong and prejudice and hate, even though it is by the slow and cruel process of years,” he said as he closed. “I ask you—more than everything else—I ask you in behalf of justice, often maligned and down-trodden, hard to protect and hard to maintain, I ask you in behalf of yourselves, in behalf of our race, to see that no harm comes to them.”
It was not the argument of a cynic.
After a brief recess, Toms sought to bring the case back from the lofty place where Darrow had raised it.
“Darrow doesn’t want to look at it as a criminal case, but as a cross section of human nature,” said Toms. “But that’s not what we are here for.”
“It isn’t your business” to settle the nation’s racial problems, he told the jury. “This courtroom is just a tiny speck in the world. We are not going to change anything here.…
“What an insignificant figure Breiner has been in this argument, and yet we started out to find who killed him.”
Toms turned to address Hays and Darrow.
“All your specious arguments, Mr. Darrow, your artful ingenuity born of many years experience—all of your racial theories, Mr. Hays, all your cleverly conceived psychology, can never dethrone justice in this case,” Toms said. “Leon Breiner, peaceably chatting with his neighbor at his doorstep, enjoying his God-given and inalienable right to live, is shot through the back from ambush. And you can’t make anything out of those facts, gentlemen of the defense, but cold-blooded murder.”
DARROW AUTOGRAPHED BOOKS when the court adjourned for lunch. Then he invited Gomon to dine with him. They both were disappointed when Ruby arrived in the courtroom.
“Aren’t you going to lunch, D?” Ruby asked her husband.
“No, I don’t want anything. Haven’t you had lunch?”
“Certainly not, and the Hayses want us to go out with them.”
“Tell them I’m busy. Can’t possibly get away. Have to see some people. And I don’t want any lunch anyway. You go with them,” he told her.
She tried to persuade him to eat a little something at least. “I don’t want anything,” he snapped. Once Ruby left the courtroom, Darrow returned to Gomon. “A married man isn’t even supposed to know when he wants to eat,” he chuckled. “Well, I guess we can go now. How about it? Do you know some place where we can get some wine?”
Darrow collected his coat and hat, and he and Gomon set off for their private get-together. To their dismay, they ran into Ruby and Hays and his wife in the lobby.
“Where you going Clarence? Change your mind about lunch?” Hays asked. Yes he had, said Darrow. They would have to “get this party over with,” he murmured to Gomon.
“Ruby was a hair shirt to him,” Toms noted. “He used to complain, volubly and occasionally profanely.”21
MURPHY MET HIS timetable. By three thirty that afternoon, the jury had been charged and began its deliberations. The great throng of Negro spectators lingered in the courtroom and spilled out into the corridor. But the quick verdict that many had expected proved elusive. The jurors argued, asked the judge to clarify some questions of law, and debated until two a.m. on Thanksgiving morning. After a few hours’ sleep, they resumed their disputation, broke for a turkey dinner, and kept at it until eleven p.m.
“All Thanksgiving Day colored people remained waiting and watching, many of them going without Thanksgiving dinner in order to be on hand,” White reported. At times, angry shouts, profanities, and the scraping of chairs could be heard through the closed door of the jury room. “I’ll stay here twenty years, if necessary, and I am younger than any