Clarence Darrow, the legendary defense attorney, always thought of himself as a dyed-in-the-wool pessimist. His answer to the questions: Does man have free will? Is there life after death? Is the human race getting anywhere? was always a resounding no! Darrow viewed history as a kind of treadmill, each generation hanging on to the same illusions, mouthing the same inanities, and repeating the same dumb mistakes as the ones before it.
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Darrow struggles against the public outcry for the execution of a 17-year-old murderer. If you’re old enough to kill, argue the capital-punishment advocates, you’re old enough to go to the chair.
In the famous Scopes trial, Darrow defends a teacher’s right to propound the theory of evolution, even though it contradicts the Bible’s literal meaning. The fundamentalists insist that anything threatening to belief must be purged, and the troublemaker punished.
“I may hate the sin but never the sinner.”
“Clarence Darrow: Legacy & Language” will show through March 18–it will close just after the day of Darrow’s death, March 13, when his admirers gather annually at the Clarence Darrow footbridge in Jackson Park to deliver speeches and throw a wreath into the water in his honor.
