Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned (95 page)

12.
White was tireless, wrangling press credentials, lunching with the judge, orchestrating the performance of the black spectators, and winning reporters to the Negro cause with his perceptive commentary and helpful favors.

13.
Transcript,
People of Michigan v. Ossian Sweet; Detroit News
, Nov. 11, 1925;
New York World
, Nov. 6, 1925;
Chicago Tribune
, Nov. 8, 1925;
Detroit Evening Times
, Nov. 6, 7, 10, 1925; White to Johnson, Nov. 13, 1925, NAACP; Cecil Rowlette and Mahoney oral histories, AB.

14.
White to Johnson, Nov. 15, 1925, NAACP; Toms oral history, AB.

15.
Ruby Darrow to Stone, CD-LOC. Actress and writer Anita Loos, in town for a production of her
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
, came to see Darrow, as did Jeanne Eagels, who was in Detroit performing a role she had made famous on Broadway, the free spirit Sadie Thompson, in the touring production of
Rain
. A very young actress, Ruth Wilcox, came by, and the somewhat notorious former Ziegfeld girl Peggy Joyce.

16.
Detroit Free Press
, Nov. 9, Nov. 16, Nov. 18, 1925;
New York Times
, Nov. 9, 1925; Reinhold Niebuhr,
Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic
(Louisville: Knox, 1990); Boyle,
Arc of Justice
.

17.
Gomon diary, JG; Gomon was a remarkable person. She helped found the National Planned Parenthood League, worked as executive secretary to Mayor Frank Murphy, was named director of the Detroit Housing Commission, and served as an adviser to Murphy, Franklin Roosevelt, Henry Ford, and Walter Reuther.

18.
The size of the mob was always in dispute. Negro witnesses placed it at over a thousand, and even the most conservative estimates established that more than enough people had gathered to endanger the Sweets. On the day after the shooting the
Detroit News
, relying on police and neighborhood sources, put its size at 150. Transcript,
People of Michigan v. Ossian Sweet; Detroit News
, Nov. 14, 16, 17, 1925;
Detroit Free Press
, Nov. 17, 18, 1925; Hays to NAACP, Oct. 19, 1925, White to Darrow, Oct. 20, 1925, and White to Hays, Oct. 21, 1925, NAACP.

19.
Transcript,
People of Michigan v. Ossian Sweet; Detroit Free Press
, Nov. 19, 1925;
Detroit Evening Times
, Nov. 18, 19, 1925.

20.
Transcript,
People of Michigan v. Ossian Sweet;
White to Johnson, Nov. 20, 1925, NAACP; Gomon diary, JG; Lilienthal, “Has the Negro the Right of Self-Defense?”

21.
Transcript,
People of Michigan v. Ossian Sweet;
Gomon diary, JG; White to Johnson, Nov. 25, 1925, and press released dated Nov. 27, 1925, NAACP;
Detroit Free Press
, Nov. 25, 1925; Lilienthal, “Has the Negro the Right of Self-Defense?”; Toms oral history, AB.

22.
Detroit News
, Nov. 26, 27, 1925;
Detroit Evening Times
, Nov. 27, 1925;
Detroit Free Press
, Nov. 27, 28, 1925; Gomon diary, JG; NAACP press bulletin, Nov. 28, 1925, and White to Davis, Nov. 30, 1925, NAACP; Hays,
Let Freedom Ring
. The
Detroit Free Press
and others reported that the alternate charge the seven jurors favored was manslaughter; see oral history of Cecil Rowlette, AB.

23.
White to Toms, Dec. 2, 1925, White to Davis, Nov. 30, 1925, Darrow to White, Dec. 3, 1925, Friedman to White, Dec. 4, 1925, and Hays to Johnson, Dec. 8, 1925, NAACP.

24.
Mary Field Parton diary, MFP;
New York Herald Tribune
, Dec. 14, 1925;
New York World
, Dec. 14, 1925;
Amsterdam News
, Dec. 16, 1925; Darrow to White, Jan. 2, 1926, NAACP.

25.
Gomon diary, JG.

26.
White had thought about hiring Chawke in the fall but paled then, and now, at the lawyer’s willingness to defend bootleggers and other reprobates. “Chawke has the reputation of getting any man free no matter how guilty,” White reported to headquarters, “with none of the idealism of Darrow or Hays.” But Darrow had no such qualms. “Can get Chawke. He is good and I think needed,” he wired Hays.

27.
Transcript,
People of Michigan v. Ossian Sweet;
Haldeman-Julius, “Clarence Darrow’s Defense”; Asher to White, May 16, 1925, memorandum of meeting between Darrow, White, and Johnson on Feb. 2, 1926, NAACP;
Detroit Free Press
, Apr. 20, 21, 24, 25, 27, 28, May 1, 2, 6, 8, 1926;
Detroit News
, Apr. 21, 22, 27, 30, May 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 1926;
Chicago Defender
, May 1, 8, 1926;
Thomas Chawke and Mahoney oral history, AB.

28.
Transcript,
People of Michigan v. Ossian Sweet;
Haldeman-Julius, “Clarence Darrow’s Defense”;
Detroit Evening Times
, May 11, 1926;
Detroit Free Press
, May 12, 1926; James W. Johnson, “Detroit,”
Crisis
, July 1926; Gomon diary, JG. The NAACP transcripts of the closing addresses are from the Burton Historical Library in Detroit, edited by Michigan law professor Bruce Frier and Patrick Hogan, available on University of Missouri professor Doug Linder’s “Famous Trials” website
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/ftrials.htm
.

29.
Detroit Free Press
, May 14, 1926;
Detroit Evening Times
, May 14, 1926;
Detroit News
, May 14, 1926; Gomon diary and unpublished chapter of Murphy biography, JG; Johnson, “Detroit”; Cash Asher, “Waiting for a Verdict with Clarence Darrow,”
Crisis
, June/July 1937. The Asher account, written more than a decade later, contains errors.

30.
“I dissent … from this legalization of racism,” Murphy wrote in the Korematsu case. “Racial discrimination in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life. It is unattractive in any setting, but it is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United
States. All residents of this nation are kin in some way by blood or culture to a foreign land. Yet they are primarily and necessarily a part of the new and distinct civilization of the United States. They must, accordingly, be treated at all times as the heirs of the American experiment, and as entitled to all the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.”

31.
In 1943, racial tensions erupted in Detroit, and in the subsequent rioting thirty-four people died. In 1967, in one of the most destructive racial clashes in American history, another riot claimed the lives of forty-three people. The National Guard and U.S. Army were sent to restore order. Some two thousand buildings burned. Toms, Mahoney, Sweet oral histories, AB; Gomon diary, JG; White to Darrow, May 13, 1926, Darrow to Johnson, May 15, 1926, Johnson to Darrow, May 21, 1926, Darrow to Johnson, May 26, 1926, White, memorandum, Dec. 12, 1930, NAACP;
Detroit Free Press
, Mar. 21, 1960; Darrow to Sally Russell, 1926, “You are all right and dangerously lovable,” quoted in Kevin Tierney,
Darrow: A Biography
(New York: Thomas Crowell, 1979).

32.
For the posttrial fates of Ossian, Gladys, Iva, and Henry Sweet, see Boyle,
Arc of Justice;
Vine,
One Man’s Castle;
Weinberg,
A Man’s Home
.

CHAPTER 20: CRASHING

1.
Rappelyea to Bailey, Aug. 7, 1925. “Now that the chuckling and giggling over the heckling of Bryan by Darrow has subsided, it is dawning upon the friends of evolution that science was rendered a wretched service by that exhibition,” wrote
Walter Lippmann, in the
New York World
. “The truth is that when Mr. Darrow in his anxiety to humiliate and ridicule Mr. Bryan resorted to sneering and scoffing at the Bible he convinced millions … that the contest at Dayton was for or against the Christian religion.”
New York World
, July 28, 1925.

2.
Bailey to Strong, Aug. 12, 1925, Bailey to Darrow, Sept. 2, 1925, Darrow to Bailey, Sept. 4, 1925, Hays to Nelles, Sept. 9, 1925, Nelles to Hays, Sept. 10, 1925, ACLU; Darrow argument before the Tennessee Supreme Court, transcript, CD-LOC.

3.
Darrow to Whitlock, Nov. 28, 1926, BW; Ruby to Jennie Moore, Sept. 8, 1926, CD-UML; Ruby to Walter White, Sept. 7, 1926, NAACP; Mary diary, Dec. 9 and 10, 1926, MFP; Darrow to Mencken, Aug. 5, 1925, Henry Mencken papers, New York Public Library; Darrow to Oswald Garrison Villard, Oct. 2, 1925, Villard papers, Harvard University.

4.
New York Times
, Nov. 18, 1926, Jan. 16, 1927; Vanzetti to Donovan, Nov. 21 and Dec. 4, 1926, Jan. 1 and Mar. 21, 1927, Sacco and Vanzetti papers, Boston Public Library; Darrow to Older, June 30, 1927, Darrow to Steffens, Dec. 28, 1926, Lincoln Steffens papers, Columbia University; Older to Darrow, Dec. 23, 1926, ALW.

5.
Darrow to Mary, July 15, 1927, CDMFP-NL;
Chicago Defender
, Aug. 6, 1927; W. H. Auden interview,
Paris Review
, no. 17, 1974.

6.
Helen to Jennie, Aug. 24, 1927, KD.

7.
Whitlock diary, Sept. 14 and 15, 1927, BW.

8.
Washington Post
, Dec. 9, 1927;
New York Times
, Dec. 9, 1927;
Chicago Tribune
, Dec. 8, 9, 1927;
Time
, Jan. 2, 27, 1928; Darrow debate with Stephen Wise, CD-CHI.

9.
Mary Field diary, Nov. 4, 12, 1927, MFP.

10.
New York Sun
, Dec. 12, 23, 1927;
New York Times
, Nov. 12, Dec. 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 29, 1927, Feb. 20, 1928;
Atlanta Constitution
, July 1, 1928; Hays,
City Lawyer;
John Diggins, “The Italo-American Anti-Fascist Opposition,”
Journal of American History
, Dec. 1967;
New York World
, Dec. 23, 24, 1927;
Brooklyn Eagle
, Dec. 18, 1927;
New York Telegram
Dec. 22, 1927;
New York Herald Tribune
, Dec. 26, 1927.

11.
Darrow to Paul, June 5, 1927, CD-UML;
New York Times
, Dec. 29, 1927, Jan. 13, 1928, Mar. 13, 1929, July 25, 1942, Aug. 25, 1949; untitled Vermont newspaper clipping, Jan. 1928, CD-LOC.

12.
Darrow also tried without success to smooth things over between
Ossian Sweet and the NAACP as they bickered over the civil suit that was filed by
Leon Breiner’s widow.
Walter White did not believe that the organization was obligated to defend Sweet in the litigation. But a defeat in the civil case “would discount the acquittal which we worked so hard to get,” Darrow said. Besides, said Darrow, “I never like to leave a client in the lurch.” They met with Sweet in Detroit. The doctor was haughty and seemed ungrateful. White concluded that Sweet was “a mental case, suffering from extreme ego and perfection complex,” and even Darrow wondered “if Sweet is quite right.” The case went to trial, and Sweet prevailed. See Darrow to White, Nov. 30, Dec. 3 and 18, 1930, White to Darrow, Feb. 3 and Dec. 12, 1930, and Sweet to Pickens, Dec. 20, 1930, NAACP. Darrow’s ties to the organization remained strong. In 1930, he joined the NAACP, White, and other liberals to defeat the nomination of Judge
John Parker to the Supreme Court seat vacated by Oliver Wendell Holmes, thus opening the way for Justice
Benjamin Cardozo to take a seat on the court.

13.
New York Times
, May 13, 1928; Jonathan Kinser, “The Racketeer and the Reformer,” graduate thesis, Youngstown State University, 2007.

14.
“It has been my privilege at various times to introduce to Clarence young ladies whose loveliness has cost me on my part a pretty penny in silver desk frames,” Nathan added. “And on every occasion, fifteen or so minutes after the prefatory amenities, the young lady has been discovered sitting as close to Clarence as two chairs would allow, and not only listening intently to every word he was saying but given every evidence … of being emotionally agitated to a very salubrious degree.” Nathan,
Intimate Notebooks
. Ruby to Gerson, Sept. 25, 1928, Perceval Gerson papers, UCLA; Mary Field Parton diary, Apr. 4, Dec. 20, 1928, MFP; Darrow to Baldwin, May 19, 1929, ACLU;
New York Times
, Apr. 17, 18, 1929.

15.
Darrow to Mary Darrow, July 7, 1929, CD-LOC; Curtis manuscript, Winterton Curtis papers, University of Missouri. For an account of Darrow’s financial woes, see Darrow and Ruby to Paul, Sept. 23, 1916, Dec. 22, 1917, Jan. 8, 1918; on the sale of Greeley gas company in 1927 and 1928; on the stock market crash, Aug. 31, Sept. 27, Oct. 4, Oct. 29, 1929; and throughout the 1930s, CD-UML; also Darrow to White, Sept. 11, 1931, NAACP.

16.
Whitlock diary, BW.

17.
Darrow to White, Sept. 11, 1931, NAACP; Darrow to Mary, Oct. 1, 1930, CDMFP-NL; Mary Field Parton diary entries, Oct. 30, 1930, Jan. 18, 1931, MFP.