Clarence Darrow is arguably one of the most famous American lawyers of the 20th century. He participated in many controversial and highly publicized trials, tirelessly defending the underdog and fighting for civil rights.
by Anita Gutierrez-Folch
Excerpted from Finding Dulcinea
Darrow was never afraid to speak his mind, and made his ideas about agnosticism, liberalism, humanism and freedom of thought known to the world.
Clarence Seward Darrow was born on April 18, 1857, in Kinsman, Ohio. His upbringing was unconventional; the fifth of Amirus and Emily Darrow’s eight children, Clarence was raised as an agnostic and an opponent of slavery. His father was a carpenter who had lost his religious faith, and his mother, who died when Clarence was only 15, was a fierce supporter of women’s rights. His parents’ influence instilled in him a religious skepticism and a love of reading that would remain with him throughout his life.
Darrow studied at Allegheny College and the University of Michigan Law School, and became a member of the Ohio bar in 1878. He practiced in small towns around Ohio for several years before moving to Chicago in search of bigger professional challenges.
In 1890, Darrow became the general attorney for the Chicago and North Western Railway. In spite of his good position and salary, he strongly believed that the criminal system in the United States favored the rich over the poor, and yearned to amend this injustice. In 1894, he quit his job in order to defend the workers of the Pullman Company, who had gone on strike.
Darrow’s continued defense of strikers, trade union leaders and anarchists earned him a reputation as a labor and criminal lawyer. “By the turn of the century he was a celebrity of the radical left,” according to filmmaker Christine Lesiak's movie Monkey Trial, (available on DVD from PBS “American Experience” ).
In 1912, Darrow took on the defense of two labor leaders who had been charged with murder in the dynamiting of the Los Angeles Times building. The trial was extremely controversial, and almost ended his career. Darrow himself came under attack and was accused of bribing the jury. Although he was found innocent of this offence, it was a turning point in his career. According to biographer Kevin Tierney, “[Darrow] was devastated … From then on he never got any employment from organized labor. His career as a union lawyer came to an end and he became a criminal defense lawyer."
By the 1920s, Darrow was one of the most famous trial attorneys in the country. In 1924, he took on the Leopold-Loeb murder case and managed to save his clients from the death penalty. In 1925, he was involved in the case of the State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes. He defended biology teacher Scopes against a Tennessee antievolution law that made it illegal “to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”
The high point of the trial was the debate between Darrow and creationist William Jennings Bryan, a politician whose political career Darrow had supported but whose religious and scientific beliefs he opposed. Although Darrow technically lost the case and Scopes was convicted and fined $100 for what the court believed to be a crime, Darrow’s defense attracted national attention and led many to question their interpretations of the Bible. Read more here.