Darrow, Clarence, 1857-1938

Author, lecturer, lawyer, and reformer.

Clarence Seward Darrow, prominent Chicago trial lawyer, was born in Kinsman, Ohio on April 18, 1857. He attended Allegheny College, after which he studied one year at the University of Michigan Law School. He then worked as a lawyer in Youngstown, and was admitted to the Ohio Bar in 1878. He practiced in Ohio for nine years, before moving to Chicago, where he practiced privately before being appointed assistant corporation counsel for the City of Chicago. For four years he served as Chief Counsel. In 1894 Darrow became the counsel for the Chicago and North Western Railway. He left this job, however, after siding with Unionists who called a strike of the American Railway Union. Darrow defended Eugene V. Debs on a charge of contempt of a federal injunction, and although he lost the case he went on to become one of the nation's leading Labor advocates. In 1907 he secured the acquittal of labor leader Bill Haywood for the murder of former Governor Frank Steuneberg of Idaho. Darrow defended many others accused of murder in the years to come, including Nathan Leopold in 1924 for the murder of Bobbie Franks. His most famous case, however, is perhaps that of Tennessee vs. John Scopes in 1925, in which he defended Scopes in a case involving the teaching of evolution and the constitutionality of a Tennessee anti-evolution statute. Darrow's opposition in that case was great trial lawyer William Jennings Bryan. Darrow had a long affiliation with the Woodlawn neighborhood, residing at 1537 E. Sixtieth Street for a large portion of his adult life. When he died, March 13, 1938, at the age of eighty, his ashes were scattered into the waters of the Jackson Park Lagoon.

Lawyer and social reformer.

Clarence S. Darrow (1857-1938) was a lawyer and social reformer who made his home and practiced law in Chicago. Throughout his life he was an active campaigner for the rights of the individual, especially the underprivileged. Darrow had a national reputation in labor law and was the counsel for labor interests throughout the country. His later legal career was mainly in criminal law. A series of spectacular trials, in particular the Leopold-Loeb case in Chicago, 1924, made him world-famous. Perhaps his most famous case was his defense of John Thomas Scopes in 1925 for violation of a Tennessee law banning the teaching of evolution in the public schools. He wrote several books expounding his views and published many lectures and debates as pamphlets. His essays and short stories were published in popular magazines and small journals.

Biographical Note