Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned - By John A. Farrell Page 0,216

wide, and swing them in half a circle. “He remained a tower of ceaseless energy, every muscle of his body strained and eager.”

Sweet “bought that home just as you buy yours, because he wanted a home to live in, to take his wife and to raise a family,” Darrow said. And “no man lived a better life or died a better death than fighting for his home and his children.”

Some of the Negro spectators were quietly weeping.

“I do not like to speak of it in the presence of these colored people, whom I have always urged to be as happy as they can. But it is true. Life is a hard game, anyhow, but when the cards are stacked against you it is terribly hard. And they are stacked against a race for no reason but that they are black,” he said. “Their ancestors were captured in the jungles and on the plains of Africa, captured as you capture wild beasts, torn from their homes and their kindred; loaded into slave ships, packed like sardines in a box, half of them dying on the ocean passage; some jumping into the sea in their frenzy, when they had a chance to choose death in place of slavery.”

It was almost five p.m. when he stood at last before the jury, worn from the long day of intense intellectual exercise, and lifted his arms out toward them, hands outspread.

“I believe the life of the Negro race has been a life of tragedy, of injustice, of oppression. The law had made him equal, but man has not,” Darrow said. “I know there is a long road ahead of him, before he can take the place which I believe he should take. I know that before him there is suffering, sorrow, tribulation and death among the blacks, and perhaps among the whites. I am sorry. I would do what I could to avert it. I would advise patience; I would advise toleration; I would advise understanding.”

Now he was leaning over the jury rail, his voice a hoarse whisper.

“I have watched, day after day, these black tense faces that have crowded this court. These black faces that now are looking to you twelve whites, feeling that the hopes and fears of a race are in your keeping,” said Darrow. “This case is about to end, gentlemen. To them, it is life. Not one of their color sits on this jury. Their fate is in the hands of twelve whites. Their eyes are fixed on you, their hearts go out to you and their hopes hang on your verdict.

“That is all. I ask you, on behalf of this defendant, on behalf of these helpless ones who turn to you … I ask you in the name of progress and of the human race, to return a verdict of not guilty in this case.” His face was white and tense from exhaustion as he sat down.

Johnson was unequivocal in his praise. “For nearly seven hours he talked to the jury. I sat where I could catch every work and every expression of his face,” Johnson wrote. “It was the most wonderful flow of words I ever heard from a man’s lips.…

“When he finished I walked over to him to express … my appreciation and thanks,” Johnson recalled. “His eyes were shining and wet. He placed his hands on my shoulders. I stammered out a few words but broke down and wept, and I was not ashamed of my tears.”

TOMS GAVE THE final closing argument the next day. He cast Breiner as a victim not of fear, but belligerence.

Even if there were five hundred people gathered around the corner that night, Toms said, people had a right to be curious, to gather outside on a warm night, to talk with neighbors and watch the excitement. “Did you ever do it? In the middle of the summer, did you ever go over to the corner store for a paper or a cigar without your coat on? Maybe in your slippers. Maybe you took a youngster along with you, and you met some neighbors over in the drug store, and you stopped to chat about the ball game that day, or how rotten the Tiger pitcher was, or how bad business is; maybe walked back with your neighbors,” Toms said. “Would you like to be called a cowardly crowd for doing that, if you happened to pass the home of a Negro?”

The Waterworks organization should not be cast as a racial