Book Review The Story of My Life by Clarence Darrow
David V. Diggs Clarence Darrow (April 18, 1957 – March 13, 1938)
remains a towering figure in American History. His autobiography, Te Story of My Life, was originally published in 1932, as his storied career was coming to a close. Within his memoir, Darrow recounts how he championed the nascent labor movement, saved Leopold and Loeb from the hangman’s noose and defended John Scopes against the crime of teaching evolution. Da Capo Press’ unabridged paperback edition,
printed in 1996, (496 pages) is provocatively
augmented by a less than worshipful introduction from Alan Dershowitz. Darrow feigns reluctance in offering reminiscences
on his early years, “Any one who desires to write a story of his ideas and philosophy should omit childhood, for this is sacred ground.” His father was “a visionary and a dreamer,” an agnostic, abolitionist and reformer. Darrow’s mother was “more efficient and practical . . . , sav[ing] the family from dire want.” Tis background foreshadows the often iconoclastic and occasionally quixotic legal career that would follow humble Midwestern origins. In his overly self-deprecating manner, Darrow confesses
that, upon joining the Ohio bar in 1878, he felt ill-prepared by his “meagre education” which amounted to one year at the University of Michigan Law School, followed by a year-long apprenticeship. After modest success in Ashtabula, Ohio, he left the small town for Chicago and the lure of greener financial pastures. His early career as general counsel to the Chicago
and North-Western Railway Company is often contrasted with Darrow’s later work championing more radical causes. Darrow acknowledges that his "general views of life were not such as fitted me for this kind of career.” During the Pullman Strike of 1894, he repeatedly approached his superiors at the railroad with his reservations, until he resigned his position to unsuccessfully defended Eugene Debs, the President of the American Railway Union, against contempt charges related to the strike. After Debs’ conviction was affirmed by the United States Supreme Court, a bitter Darrow concludes that “Eugene Debs was sent to jail . . . for trying to help his fellow man.” Darrow’s staunch opposition to capital punishment is on
full display as he recounts his defense of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, charged in 1924 with the gruesome murder of
Clarence Darrow, 1922 Photo courtesy of United States Library of Congress Trial Reporter / Winter 2010 45
Darrow offers fresh and progressive views on justice, governance and what it means to be an American.
fourteen-year-old Robert Franklin. After convincing them to plead guilty, Darrow avoids a death sentence by offering expert testimony from physicians and “alienists.” He acknowledges that his victory was somewhat hollow: “Te lives of Loeb and Leopold were saved. But there was nothing before them, to the end, but stark, blank stone walls.” Tree chapters are devoted to Darrow’s most renowned
case, the Scopes Monkey Trial. He sets the scene poetically in Dayton, Tennessee, during the sultry summer of 1925, wryly observing, “Tennessee must be close to the equator.” Darrow makes no attempt to mask his deep-seated derision for his adversary, William Jennings Bryan. And the deck was stacked against him as he prepared to try his case before a judge, who
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