Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned - By John A. Farrell Page 0,296
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Chicago at the turn of the century, shortly after Darrow arrived. The “smooth-faced” young man rose through the city’s rough legal and political scenes at a pace that the newspapers called “phenomenal.”
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Clarence Darrow’s great mentor, Illinois governor John Peter Altgeld. “His character was that of the dreamer, of the idealist”, but “there was mixed with that … the practical touch of the politician”, said Darrow. “He knew how to play to those cheap feelings which the politician uses to inspire the vulgar mob.”
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Railway union leader and socialist Eugene Debs, who hired Darrow after the federal government crushed a successful strike against the Pullman company and the nation’s railroads in 1894. “He never felt fear”, said Darrow. “He had the courage of the babe who has no conception of the word.”
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In the wake of the great Pullman strike, the cover of the July 21, 1894, edition of Harper’s Weekly showed John P. Altgeld in a fool’s cap and a gang of Populist leaders bearing Eugene Debs as the king of anarchy.
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Darrow’s longtime lover, Mary Field Parton. She would have been content to be “his loving mistress”, her sister Sara said, if Darrow were not “running after these disgustingly brainless women all the time.”
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The radical muckraker Lincoln Steffens, who joined with Darrow in progressive causes and stuck by him through perilous times. “Sometimes all we humans have is a friend, somebody to represent God in the world”, Steffens said. It was he who christened Darrow “the attorney for the damned.”
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Lawyer and poet Edgar Lee Masters. In 1903, he formed a law partnership with Darrow, which ultimately collapsed in enmity. In the end, they were too much alike.
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In the winter of 1902–03, Darrow represented the striking United Mine Workers before a presidential commission investigating the dire working conditions of anthracite coal miners. He called a number of child laborers and injured miners to testify, including “breaker boys” like these. Lewis Hine, who took these two photographs at a Pennsylvania Coal Company mine in Pittston, Pennsylvania, wrote, “The dust was so dense at times as to obscure the view. This dust penetrated the utmost recesses of the boys’ lungs. A kind of slave-driver sometimes stands over the boys, prodding them into obedience.”
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Muckraker Henry Demarest Lloyd, union leader John Mitchell, and Darrow. For their ardent work representing the mine workers before the presidential commission, they became known as “the miners’ trinity.”
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Union officials George Pettibone, Big Bill Haywood, and Charles Moyer in the yard outside the Boise, Idaho, jail, awaiting their trials for the assassination of former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg by a bomb planted at his front gate.
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Harry Orchard, the bomber and key witness. Not until Lee Harvey Oswald shot President John F. Kennedy would the motive and paymaster of an assassin again be cause for such bitter, unresolved contention.
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The legendary Pinkerton detective, James McParland, who obtained Harry Orchard’s confession. Darrow called him “the greatest detective in the West.”
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Prosecutor and, later, governor James Hawley, in the Wild West getup that appealed to his constituents. In court during the Haywood trial, Darrow baited him so often that Hawley’s son threatened to thrash him.
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A closer look at Darrow in action, questioning a witness during the Haywood trial. Behind him is Big Bill. The bald-headed man to the right of Haywood is co-counsel Edmund Richardson, who clashed with Darrow over the conduct of the trial.
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Crowds gather in downtown Los Angeles on October 1, 1910, to see the smoking ruins of the Los Angeles Times Building, where a union bomb claimed the lives of twenty men.
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Union bombers John J. and James B. McNamara in prison at San Quentin. “I saw war” in capital’s cruel treatment of labor, said Jim McNamara, who placed the bomb in Ink Alley at the Times. The deal that Darrow cut to save their lives almost cost him his career, his marriage, and his freedom.
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Darrow entering his plea of “not guilty” to charges that he bribed the jury at the McNamara brothers’ trial. “The forces that control in this United States, the great forces of evil, want to destroy me”, he told the jurors at his trial.
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In this photograph, taken at the celebration following Darrow’s acquittal in his first bribery trial, he and his wife, Ruby, sit at a table, and a happy Mary Field stands between them.
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Earl Rogers, Darrow’s lawyer in the bribery trials. The defense he crafted, with its drama and hysterics, was tailored to foil the prosecution’s case.
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Darrow back at work in Chicago, captured by a Daily News photographer, on his way to court on a downtown street.
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The capsized Eastland at its berth on the Chicago River. It was the worst disaster, in terms of lives lost, in Chicago history. Darrow led a successful defense of the ship’s engineer, who was blamed for the tragedy despite his heroic efforts to save lives.
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Darrow, speaking to Judge John Caverly. To the left are Richard Loeb, in a light-colored jacket and tie, and Nathan Leopold, in a dark tie and suit, facing execution for killing young Bobby Franks for “the thrill” of it in 1924. The man in glasses to the left of Leopold, whose face is partially obscured by the lamp shade, is prosecutor Robert Crowe.
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Leopold, Loeb, and Darrow in the courtroom. Leopold is the scarier-looking, but he managed to live a productive life in prison and was paroled after three decades behind bars. Loeb met an early death, knifed in jail by another inmate.
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William Jennings Bryan, arriving in Dayton, Tennessee, in July 1925 for the Scopes Monkey Trial. Bryan enlisted in the prosecution to promote his campaign to bar the teaching of evolution in public schools. His presence drew Darrow into a sensational and historic showdown with Bryan and the fundamentalists over academic and scientific freedom.
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John Scopes, the defendant, welcomes Darrow, his lawyer, in this photograph staged for the press. Between them, leaning to get into the picture, is Tennessee attorney John Neal, another member of the defense team.
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The streets of Dayton became a circus, hosting all sorts of festivities and attractions, including this sermon from the traveling evangelist T. T. Martin, a determined foe of evolution.
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The greatest legal face-off in American history took place on a small wooden platform on the lawn of the Dayton courthouse, in the shade of the trees. Here Bryan, on the witness stand, is answering Darrow, who seems to be plucking at his suspenders.
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Dr. Ossian Sweet, who was charged with murdering a white man while defending his Detroit home (below) from a racist mob. Darrow asked the all-white jury to put themselves in Sweet’s place and to recognize that black men, too, have a right to self-defense.
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In 1932, an emotionally troubled Thalia Massie claimed she was raped by a group of native Hawaiian youths. Her husband, Thomas, a naval officer at Pearl Harbor, led a lynch gang that kidnapped and murdered a young Hawaiian man in revenge. Darrow agreed to represent the killers because he needed money after losing all his savings in the stock market crash of 1929. Besides, he told the press, he had always wanted to see Hawaii. It was his last high-profile case.
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Clarence Darrow, circa 1902. At forty-five, he was one of the nation’s foremost labor lawyers, a defender of radicals and dissenters, a populist and progressive reformer, and almost mayor of Chicago. And his worst, and best, days were still ahead of him.