"If I thought any of you had any opinion about the guilt of my clients, I wouldn't worry, because that might be changed. What I'm worried about is prejudices. They are harder to change." – Clarence Darrow to a jury in 1925.

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By Stephen Anderson
Wednesday, March 13, will be the 70th anniversary of the death in Chicago of famed Chicago criminal defense trial lawyer Clarence Seward Darrow.

As has been their annual custom, members and friends of the Clarence Darrow Commemorative Committee will gather at 10 a.m. that day on the memorial bridge behind the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago for appropriate remembrances and tossing of a wreath.

Darrow is said to have promised in 1938 on his death bed, nearby on East 60th Street, that his ghost would appear some time in the future at the Jackson Park Lagoon, where his ashes were to be scattered.

After the ceremony, the group will move to the Rosenwald Auditorium in the West Pavilion of the museum for a speech by Catherine Crawford, clinical associate professor at the Northwestern University School of Law.

Crawford's subject, "Challenging Raci-ally Motivated Prosecutions," will touch on the "Jena Six" incident in Louisiana of black high school students charged with attempted murder in the beating of a white student.

The topic is appropriate in that Clarence Darrow successfully defended a black man and his family against murder charges 80 years ago after they defended their home against a white mob in Detroit.

Born April 18, 1857, in Ohio, Darrow became known as "attorney for the damned" because of the many hopeless cases and unpopular causes he took on.

Among them was the 1887 attempt in Chicago to free anarchists who were accused of the Haymarket riot deaths of policemen. He saved Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold from execution in 1924 for the thrill killing of a teenager.

Darrow retired after gaining life sentences for Leopold and Loeb, but volunteered with the ACLU to defend John Scopes in 1925 so he could debate William Jennings Bryan on fundamentalist interpretations of biblical creation.