Centerstage - Chicago's Original City Guide

Immortalized for his part in several sensational "trials of the century," Clarence Seward Darrow was a lawyer and teacher who wrote books expounding on his legal views. Darrow was born in Ohio. After attending Allegheny College and the University of Michigan Law School, he moved to Chicago to practice law.

He quickly insured his political future by befriending both labor reformers and bosses from the 1st Ward Democratic machine. He first made a name for himself by handling cases for the city, and then became a trial lawyer in civil cases. With Lyman Trumbull and Steven Gregory he defended Eugene V. Debs in the Pullman factory strike, losing the case but winning recognition.

At the age of 56, after years of perfecting his courtroom techniques, he began taking on criminal cases. He defended the right of John Scopes, a Tennessee teacher, to lecture on the theories of evolution in his classes, squaring off against William Jennings Bryan in a trial that exemplified conflict between the past and the modern world. He also defended Leopold and Loeb, the two University of Chicago Laboratory School students who kidnapped and killed a younger boy, but they were the only clients he ever asked to plead guilty.

Darrow's personal beliefs were a contradictory amalgam of ideas that emerged in his lifetime, but he was prepared to argue brilliantly in favor of any one of them. He died in Chicago in 1938, and his ashes were scattered in the Jackson Park lagoon, near his home.

Selected Works:

• Absurdities of the Bible, 1920
• An Eye for an Eye, 1905
• Facing Life Fearlessly, 1929
• Infidels and Heretics, (co-written with Walter Rice) 1927
• The Prohibition Mania, (co-written with Victor S. Yarros) 1927
• The Story of My Life, 1932
• Verdicts Out of Court, (a collection of many of the above essays) 1989
• Why I Am an Agnostic and Other Essays, 1994 There are also biographies and critical analyses of his work, too numerous to mention.

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