Reading suggestions: Darrow -- and also Vanderveer

From RBB -- but likely of some interest elsewhere.

If someone is really -- really -- interested in Clarence Darrow's significant contributions, and not so much his  personal history [and questions such as Portside's strange tag on its post, Clarence Darrow: Jury Tamperer?], I strongly suggest Arthur Weinberg, Editor, Attorney for the Damned, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1957 -- and many subsequent editions.  It contains more than a dozen of Darrow's speeches, most in the context of his major court cases and attendant important principles.  Weinberg's notes are excellent.  Justice William O. Douglas wrote the Foreword.  It's a very full, big book: 552 pages with bibliography and index.

Since its initial appearance, when I was 23, I've owned at least a dozen copies: hardback, some paperback.  I gave my original copy to a Tougaloo student and later a major figure in SNCC -- who completed law school at Howard. Years later, two other students of mine who wound up with copies from me, both Ojibwe, became in time very successful attorneys.  And I gave other copies away to various students especially interested in civil rights and civil liberties.

Another book, not so easily found, is Counsel for the Damned: A Biography of George Francis Vanderveer, by Lowell S. Hawley and Ralph Bushnell Potts, J.B. Lippincott Company, 1953.  It's an excellent and highly readable account of the committed attorney who represented IWW defendants in some of the union's most notable cases:  Everett Massacre, 1916; Chicago Espionage and Sedition Trial, 1918; Centralia Massacre 1919; and thereafter for some years.

H.


HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ 
and Ohkwari' 
www.hunterbear.org 
(much social justice material)
 
For the new, just out (11/2011) and expanded/updated
edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- 
with a new and substantial Introduction by me:
http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm
 
Our community organizing course:
http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm
 
Personal Background Narrative (with many links):
http://hunterbear.org/narrative.htm