Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned (94 page)

21.
Schretter, “I Remember Darrow,” Marcet Haldeman-Julius,
Clarence Darrow’s Two Great Trials
(Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius Co., 1927); Ruby Darrow letter to Stone, CD-LOC; Ruby to Helen Darrow, 1940, KD; Mary Bryan, “Bulletin No. 2,” July 20, 1925, WJB. Bryan’s wife Mary wrote a series of “bulletins” for her children, which were incorporated into an unpublished biography of Bryan written by his daughter, which can be found, along with some of the original bulletins, in the Bryan papers at the Library of Congress.

22.
Baltimore Evening Sun
, July 9, 14, 1925; Mencken to Haardt, July 9, 1925 in
Mencken and Sara;
L. Sprague de Camp,
The Great Monkey Trial
.

23.
W. E. B. Du Bois, “Scopes,” in the
Crisis
, Sept. 1925.

24.
Trial transcript,
The State of Tennessee v. Scopes
. The trial transcript was published as
The World’s Greatest Court Trial
(Cincinnati: National Book Co., 1925) and has been reprinted through the years. It can now be found on the Internet as well.
New York Times
, July 10, 11, 1925;
Washington Post
, July 11, 1925;
Los Angeles Times
, July 11, 1925;
Chicago Tribune
, July 9, 10, 11, 1925; Mary Bryan bulletin, WJB.

25.
Baltimore Evening Sun
, July 13, 1925; Will Rogers column,
Washington Post
, July 13, 1925.

26.
Transcript,
The State of Tennessee v. Scopes;
Mencken to Haardt, July 14, 1925, in Rogers,
Mencken and Sara
.

27.
Transcript,
The State of Tennessee v. Scopes; Baltimore Evening Sun
, July 14, 1925;
Los Angeles Times
, July 15, 1925;
New York Times
, July 14, 1925;
Chicago Tribune
, July 14, 1925; Masters to Monroe, July 16, 1925, ELM.

28.
Transcript,
The State of Tennessee v. Scopes;
Curtis to Darrow, July 27, 1925, and excerpts from memoir, Winterton Curtis papers, University of Missouri.

29.
Transcript,
The State of Tennessee v. Scopes
. “I reckon likely we never did get around to that evolution lesson. But the kids were good sports and wouldn’t squeal on me in court,” Scopes told Charles Potter. See Potter, “Ten Years After the Monkey Show I’m Going Back to Dayton,”
Liberty Magazine
, Sept. 28, 1935.

30.
Transcript,
The State of Tennessee v. Scopes;
John Scopes, “Reflections: Forty Years After,” in
D-Days at Dayton
, ed. Jerry Tompkins (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965); Mary Bryan, Bulletin No. 2, WJB; McGeehan
Herald Tribune
story reprinted in the
Los Angeles Times
, July 17, 1925.

31.
Transcript,
The State of Tennessee v. Scopes; Baltimore Evening Sun
, July 17, 27, 1925; L. Sprague de Camp,
The Great Monkey Trial
.

32.
Transcript,
The State of Tennessee v. Scopes; Chattanooga Times
, July 16, 1925; McGeehan in
Los Angeles Times
, July 17, 1925; Fay-Cooper Cole, “50 Years Ago: A Witness at the Scopes Trial,”
Scientific American
, Jan. 1959;
Chicago Tribune
, July 18, 1925; Mary Bryan, Bulletin No. 2, WJB.

33.
Mencken to Haardt, July 19, 1925, in Rogers,
Mencken and Sara
.

34.
Mencken was not run out of town. Well before the townfolk gathered, Mencken had told Sara Haardt that he planned to leave on Saturday. Mencken to Harry Rickel, July 19, 1925, Henry Mencken papers, Princeton University;
Baltimore Evening Sun
, July 18, 1925.

35.
Potter, “Ten Years After”; Eli Ginzberg,
Keeper of the Law: Louis Ginzberg
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1966).

36.
Chicago Tribune
, July 18, 1925.

37.
Transcript,
The State of Tennessee v. Scopes;
Mary Bryan, Bulletin No. 3, WJB; Scopes,
Center of the Storm
.

38.
Transcript,
The State of Tennessee v. Scopes
. At this point in their exchange, both Darrow and Bryan confused Bishop Ussher’s date of creation with his date of the Flood. Darrow later misstated the age of Chinese civilization, but Bryan’s lack of knowledge of ancient history cost him an opportunity to correct his adversary.

39.
Transcript,
The State of Tennessee v. Scopes;
Scopes,
Center of the Storm;
Hays,
City Lawyer;
Hays, “The Strategy of the Scopes Defense,”
The Nation
, Aug. 5, 1925.

40.
Transcript,
The State of Tennessee v. Scopes;
Hays,
City Lawyer
.

41.
Darrow to Mencken, Aug. 5, 1925, Mencken papers, New York Public Library;
Chattanooga News
, July 21, 1925;
New York Times
, July 21, 1925; Mary Bryan, Bulletin No. 3, WJB. The face-saving reason for not giving Bryan his shot at Darrow, which Bryan’s loved ones clung to in the difficult days ahead, was that Dayton officials could not guarantee security. A gun-toting fundamentalist in the courtyard crowd had his hand on his weapon and was prepared to shoot Darrow, the Bryans were told. “Thus it will be seen,” wrote Bryan’s daughter Grace, “that my father relinquished his right to cross-examine the attorneys for the defense to prevent any tragedy.”

42.
Transcript,
The State of Tennessee v. Scopes;
Herbert Hicks to Ira Hicks, July 22, 1925, Sue Hicks papers, University of Tennessee; Russell Owen,
Current History Magazine
, Sept. 1925;
New York Times
, July 22, 1925.

43.
Ruby Darrow to Stone, CD-LOC;
The Nation
, Aug. 5, 1925. Some time later, Darrow learned that a newspaper editor he knew, wanting to honor the Bryan of 1896, was going to raise money for a memorial. “Sentimental poppycock,” Darrow told him. “It’s the Monkey Trial Bryan those damn bells will ring for. And you’ll pull the ropes … You’re the last man in the world who should perpetuate such bigotry, such religious fanaticism.” It was left to the fundamentalists to honor Bryan—at the site of his great humiliation. There is a single statue on the lawn of the Rhea County courthouse—it is of William Jennings Bryan.

CHAPTER 19: SWEET

1.
Russell Owen, “The Significance of the Scopes Trial,”
Current History
, Sept. 1925; Lincoln Steffens, “Attorney for the Damned”;
Vanity Fair
, Mar. 1927. Darrow stalks American literature in many guises.
Sinclair Lewis created the Darrow-like lawyer Seneca Doane in
Babbitt
and long worked on an unfinished “labor novel” with a Darrowesque hero. In
Native Son
,
Richard Wright patterned attorney Boris Max on Darrow, whom the author called “the quintessence of all that was good and great in an America that is no more.” See Hazel Rowley,
Richard Wright
(New York: Henry Holt, 2001) and Robert Butler, “The Loeb and Leopold Case: A Neglected Source for Richard Wright’s Native Son,”
African American Review
, winter 2005.
Theodore Dreiser told Darrow he was constantly in his thoughts as he wrote the trial section of
An American Tragedy
.
Maureen Watkins reported on the Leopold and Loeb case for the
Chicago Tribune
, and the killers make a cameo appearance as clients of lawyer Billy Flynn in her 1926 play
Chicago
. The reference is explicit in the stage directions of the 1976 musical version (“Billy gets ready for his courtroom ‘scene’—pulling his shirt out, roughing up his hair, exposing some down-home suspenders—his ‘Clarence Darrow’ look”) as he sings “Give ’em the old Razzle Dazzle.” And Darrow is obviously Jonathan Wilk in the novel and motion picture
Compulsion
, based on the Franks murder, and Henry Drummond in the play and motion picture
Inherit the Wind
, which immortalized the Monkey Trial.

2.
Wood diary, July 16, 1925, CESW-HL; Masters to Mencken, July 21, 1925, ELM; Whitlock diary, Aug. 14, 1925, BW; see also Matt Schmidt to Fremont Older, Aug. 31, 1925, Fremont Older papers, University of California, Berkeley.

3.
Transcript,
The People of Michigan v. Ossian Sweet et al.
, University of Michigan. The Sweets bought the house from Ed Smith, a black man passing as white, and his white wife. “Only their close friends … seem to know that the Smiths are colored,” Walter White reported.
Detroit News
, Sept. 10, Nov. 18, 19, 20, 1925;
Chicago Defender
, July 18, 1925; NAACP correspondence, especially White to Johnson, Sept. 16, 1925, and letter, undated, from Gladys Sweet, NAACP.

4.
Transcript,
The People of Michigan v. Ossian Sweet et al
.

5.
Transcript,
People of Michigan v. Ossian Sweet; Detroit Free Press
, Sept. 10, Nov. 21, 1925;
Detroit News
, Sept. 10, Nov. 18, 21, 1925; “Address of Arthur Garfield Hays,” Jan. 3, 1926, NAACP;
Detroit Times
, May 5, 1926; Robert Toms, Otis Sweet, and Charles Mahoney, oral histories, AB; William Tuttle,
Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919
(New York: Atheneum, 1970). For further details of Dr. Sweet’s background see Weinberg,
A Man’s Home
(New York: McCall, 1971); Phyllis Vine,
One Man’s Castle
(New York: HarperCollins, 2004); Kevin Boyle,
Arc of Justice
(New York: Henry Holt, 2004).

6.
Transcript,
People of Michigan v. Ossian Sweet; Detroit Evening Times
, Oct. 16, 1925; Walter White, “The Burning of Jim McIlherron: An NAACP Investigation,”
Crisis
, May 1918, and “The Work of a Mob,”
Crisis
, Sept. 1918. White’s bravery as an investigator for the NAACP is chronicled in his autobiography,
A Man Called White
(New York: Viking, 1948) and in Kenneth Janken,
White
(New York: New Press, 2003). See also James Weldon Johnson, “Lynching: America’s National Disgrace,” in
Current History
, Jan. 1924, in which the NAACP executive placed the number of lynchings in the four decades around the turn of the century at four thousand, and the following reports in the
Crisis:
“The Waco Horror,” July 1916; “The Burning at Dyersburg,” Feb. 1918; “Memphis, May 22, A.D., 1917,” July 1917; and the NAACP publication “An American Lynching: Being the Burning at Stake of Henry Lowry at Nodena, Arkansas, January 26, 1921, as Told in American Newspapers” (New York: NAACP, 1921). The Sweet brothers were well aware of what happened at such events. There were claims by some defendants that shots were fired from the crowd on Garland Avenue, but no proof was ever offered at the trials. See White,
A Man Called White
, p. 74: “Instead of stones and bricks banging against the house, bullets pierced it.”

7.
Transcript,
People of Michigan v. Ossian Sweet; Detroit Free Press
, Nov. 19, 1925; Gladys Sweet to White, Oct. 1925, NAACP.

8.
White,
A Man Called White;
Kenneth Janken,
White
. White became a good friend of Darrow’s and named a son Walter Carl Darrow White. Correspondence with Detroit branch and NAACP headquarters, NAACP.

9.
Darrow helped relieve the NAACP of the cost of his expenses in Detroit by making speeches. NAACP correspondence, records, and minutes. See especially “Memorandum
of Expenses in Case of Dr. Ossian H. Sweet et al.,” Bagnall to Young, July 21, 1925, White to Johnson, Sept. 16, 1925, Johnson to Darrow, Oct. 7, 1925, Du Bois to Darrow, Oct. 7, 1925, White to Midgley, Oct. 22, 1925, Darrow to White, Oct. 22, 1925, and White to Seligmann, Oct. 22, 1925, NAACP;
New York Herald Tribune
, Aug. 5, 1925; Robert Toms oral history, AB. The story of Darrow’s meeting with NAACP officials is told in the memoirs of White and Hays.

10.
Detroit News
, Oct. 16, 1925;
Detroit Free Press
, Oct. 16, 1925; David Lilienthal, “Has the Negro the Right of Self-Defense?”
Nation
, Dec. 23, 1925; White to Johnson, Sept. 17, 1925, and Walker to White, Oct. 27, 1925, NAACP;
Josephine Gomon, unpublished biography of Frank Murphy, Josephine Gomon papers, University of Michigan; Otis Sweet oral history, AB.

11.
Detroit News
, Oct. 31, Nov. 1, 1925;
Detroit Free Press
, Oct. 31, Nov. 5, 1925;
Detroit Evening Times
, Oct. 31, 1925; Baker to White, Oct. 21, 1925, and White to Johnson (dated “Saturday night”), Oct. 31, 1925, Baker to White, Feb. 20, 1926, NAACP; Marcet Haldeman-Julius, “Clarence Darrow’s Defense of a Negro,”
Haldeman-Julius Monthly
, July 1926; Gomon diary, JG; Toms oral history, AB; Hays,
Let Freedom Ring
(New York: Liveright, 1928).