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.” Th
e 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.
18. Jonathan Eig, in his book Get Capone (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), makes the case that Darrow’s client White was the architect of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Chicago Tribune, May 30, Sept. 22, Oct. 14, 16, 1926, July 17, Sept. 20, Oct. 1, 1930, Feb. 28, May 26, 1931; Rose Keefe, The Man Who Got Away (Nashville: Cumberland, 2005). Darrow to Stephenson, Nov. 2, 1928, and Darrow–Stephenson correspondence, CD-UML.
19. See 1931 correspondence between Walter White and Darrow, NAACP, especially White to Darrow, Apr. 10, Aug. 31, 1931, and White’s reports to the NAACP board. See also White, “The Scottsboro Case,” an Oct. 23, 1931, NAACP pamphlet; Dan T. Carter, Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969); Philip Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown (New York: Modern Library, 2002); Chicago Tribune, Apr. 10, 1933; New York Times, Dec. 28, 30, 1931, Jan. 190, 1932; Apr. 7, Jun. 23, 1933; Pittsburgh Courier, Jan. 23, 1932.
20. Darrow to Wood, Feb. 18, 1932, CESW-HL. The communists won new trials for the Scottsboro boys, and Samuel Leibowitz, a New York lawyer, agreed to represent the young men. Ruby Bates recanted her testimony, and Leibowitz raised serious questions about the absence of physical evidence—bruising, swelling, or sperm—that should have been present after a gang rape. When the jury still returned a guilty verdict, a most courageous Alabama jurist, Judge James Horton, tossed it out and ordered yet another trial. Years passed, trials were held, and the U.S. Supreme Court handed down two landmark rulings. But time and again, Alabama juries brought back guilty verdicts. After they had spent six years in jail, the state finally dropped charges against four of the young men. Others were eventually given parole or escaped. The last defendant did not leave jail until 1950.
21. Darrow had to explain his actions to Wood, Mary, and other friends, and to the liberal community in the essay “Scottsboro” in the Crisis of March 1932. See Darrow to Wood, Feb. 18, 1932, and Mary to Sara, Feb. 18, 1932, CESW-HL. On the showdown with the ILD, see Darrow to White, Dec. 31, 1931, March 10, 1932, and Roderick Beddow to White, Jan. 2, 1932, NAACP. Darrow’s money woes are chronicled in Darrow to White, Sept. 11, 12, 1931, May 3, June 5, 1932, and White to Springarn, June 9, 1932, NAACP. Darrow paid the money back in $250 increments over the next two years. For accounts of the dispute between the communists and the NAACP see Hugh T. Murray, “The NAACP versus the Communist Party: The Scottsboro Rape Cases, 1931–1932,” Phylon, vol. 28, 1967; Mark Solomon, The Cry Was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917–1936 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998); Hays, Trial by Prejudice (New York: Da Capo, 1970).
CHAPTER 21: CLOSING
1. Trial transcript, Territory of Hawaii v. Grace Fortescue, et al., Hawaii State Archives; police statements and interviews, and Admiral Yates Stirling report to the secretary of the navy, Dec. 23, 1931, Victor Houston papers, Hawaii State Archives; Pinkerton report, “ ‘Ala Moana’ Case,” PP; Pinkerton interviews, Lawrence Judd papers, Hawaii State Archives; seaman Eddie Lord interview in Peter Van Slingerland, Something Terrible Has Happened (New York: Harper and Row, 1966).
2. Yates Stirling, Sea Duty (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1938); Admiral William Pratt, chief of naval operations, Dec. 21, 1931, Victor Houston papers, Hawaii State Archives; Pinkerton report, PP.
3. Transcript, Territory of Hawaii v. Grace Fortescue, et al.; see Thalia to Darrow, undated letter, Leo Cherne papers, Boston University; Alexander Robertson, “Memorandum: the Ala Moana Case,” Houston papers; Pinkerton report, PP; Pinkerton interviews, Judd to secretary of the interior, Jan. 18, 1932, and Pinkerton to Judd, Oct. 3, 1922, Judd papers; Van Slingerland, Something Terrible Has Happened; David Stannard, Honor Killing (New York: Viking, 2005).
4. Transcript, Territory of Hawaii v. Grace Fortescue, et al.; Mills to Houston, Dec. 15, 1931, Houston papers; Judd to secretary of the interior, Jan. 18, 1932, Pinkerton to Judd, Oct. 3, 1932, Pinkerton interviews, Lawrence Judd papers; Pinkerton report, PP; Honolulu Advertiser, Jan. 9, 10, 1932; New York Times, Jan. 9–31, 1932; Washington Star, Jan. 10, 1932; Philip Kinsley Chicago Tribune story reprinted in Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Mar. 19, 1932; Dillingham to Warren, Jan. 29, 1932, Walter F. Dillingham papers, Bishop Museum, Hawaii.
5. Time, Apr. 18, 1932; NAACP to Adams, Jan. 15, 1932, NAACP; Honolulu Advertiser, Mar. 30, 1932.
6. Thalia liked Darrow and called him “Judge.” She teased him about “that unstrained grape juice that made you sick.” New York Times, Jan. 15, Feb. 25, 27, Mar. 2, 27, Apr. 2, 10, 1932; Dillingham to Louise, Jan. 19, 1932, Dillingham to Colby, Jan. 27, 1932, Dillingham to Warren, Jan. 29, Mar. 28, 1932, Walter F. Dillingham papers, Bishop Museum, Hawaii; Julien Ripley to Darrow, Mar. 3, 1932, Ripley to Darrow, memorandum on financial terms, and Leisure to Darrow with Ruby Darrow comments, Mar. 5, 1932, Leo Cherne papers, Boston University; Ruby to Darrow, Mar. 3, 1932, Leisure to Stone, Aug. 1, 1940, CD-LOC; Darrow to Barnes, Mar. 5, 12, 1932, ALW; Chicago Bee, Mar. 27, 1932; Hawaii Hochi, Mar. 29, 1932.
7. Darrow, “Conditions in the Hawaiian Islands,” a talk on the Massie case to the Chicago Bar Association, June 4, 1932. Some of the newspapers counted Edward Goeas, a juror of Portuguese descent, as white, as I have. Others put him in the nonwhite category. Leisure to Stone, Aug. 1, 1940, CD-LOC.
8. Transcript, Territory of Hawaii v. Grace Fortescue, et al.; New York Times, Apr. 7, 1932; the account of the trial comes from the transcript, which has gaps, at the Hawaii State Archives and from newspaper coverage in the Hawaii Hochi, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, the Honolulu Advertiser, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune. Massie’s account differed in minor ways from what Kelley alleged. According to Massie, Kahahawai sat on a chaise lounge, not a bed. Massie said he wore dark glasses as a disguise, but not a fake mustache.
9. Transcript, Territory of Hawaii v. Grace Fortescue, et al. Kelley never introduced the document as evidence, so we do not know what it contained. But Thalia later told Darrow that Tommie was cold, and physically abused her. If she informed Professor Kelly that Tommie was a cruel spouse, it would have confirmed for many in Hawaii the speculation that her injuries came at the hand of her husband. Van Slingerland, Something Terrible Has Happened
; Kelly to Judd, Feb. 20, and Mar. 9, 1967, and Nov. 17, 1969, with Nov. 15, 1969, memo, Lawrence Judd papers, Hawaii State Archives.
10. Transcript, Territory of Hawaii v. Grace Fortescue, et al. Kelley had several rebuttal witnesses, including two psychiatrists from the mainland, who told the jury that Massie was surely sane at the time of the killing.
11. Transcript, Territory of Hawaii v. Grace Fortescue, et al. Darrow was grieving after hearing the news that his old friend Banks, the Chicago newspaperman, had been killed in a freak auto accident.
12. Dillingham’s correspondence shows how Darrow cultivated the military and commercial leaders in Hawaii throughout the trial (see Dillingham to Lowell, May 6, 1932, “We met in the game room and the meeting lasted until midnight,” Walter F. Dillingham papers, Bishop Museum, Hawaii). And the Dillingham, Houston, and Judd papers show how the initial outrage in Washington was tempered over time by the various strategic and commercial concerns. Van Slingerland says that President Hoover phoned Judd in Darrow’s presence and ordered that the sentences be commuted. Judd’s papers, however, contain his private and public notations insisting this never happened. Judd was in contact with Hoover’s secretary of the interior, Ray Wilbur, throughout the drama, but the governor appears to have responded to congressional pressure, not White House interference. A copy of the Dillingham “Memorandum” is in the Lawrence Judd papers, Hawaii State Archives; Los Angeles Times, May 1, 1932; Hawaii Hochi, May 3, 1932; Judd memoir, Lawrence Judd papers, Hawaii State Archives; Leisure to Stone, Aug. 1, 1940, CD-LOC.
13. Wright to Darrow, May 7, 1932, BU; Darrow packed a three-day stay in San Francisco with errands and events on his way home. He gave three speeches in the Bay Area, visited with Fremont Older, saw J. B. McNamara at San Quentin, and traveled with Older to see William Randolph Hearst at San Simeon, presumably to ask for the publisher’s help in winning McNamara his freedom. Older marveled at Darrow’s drive and told a mutual friend that Darrow was physically frail, “flat broke through investments and … quite happy.”
Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned Page 67
