CHRONOLOGY OF DARROW’S LIFE

AGE	YEAR	EVENT
	1857	Born 18 April in Farmdale, Ohio, the fifth of eight children (six boys and two girls). Farming supported the family from 1853 to 1855, when Darrow’s father started a modest furniture shop.
8	1865	Moves with his family to the nearby village of Kinsman, Ohio, where his father reestablishes his furniture shop and opens a furniture store. Attends country school and the academy in Kinsman.
15	1872	Mother dies. Later in the year, enrolls at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania. Attends one year in the preparatory department of the college.
16	1873	Begins teaching country school in the Kinsman area, which he continues for three years. Works in his father’s furniture shop and store during the summer months. Studies law on the side.
20	1877	Enrolls in the law department at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and attends one year of classes.
21	1878	Works in a law office in Youngstown, Ohio, where he reads for the law.
22	1879	Admitted to the bar and starts a law practice in Youngstown.
23	1880	Marries Jessie Ohl and moves his law practice to Andover, Ohio, where he also sells real estate and insurance.
26	1883	Darrow and Jessie’s son (their only child), Paul, is born.
27	1884	Moves to Ashtabula, Ohio, and continues to practice law. Elected city solicitor, a part-time position that he holds until he moves to Chicago. Speaks and writes on free trade and other subjects.
30	1887	Moves to Chicago, where he rents desk space in a law office. Becomes actively involved in politics and the labor movement.
32	1889	Moves his office to the ten-story Montauk Building. Appointed special assessment attorney for the city and later appointed assistant corporation counsel.
33	1890	Tries many cases involving city matters and provides many legal opinions for the city. Considered by some as a potential candidate for Congress or a judgeship.
34	1891	Loses a contest to become Cook County attorney. Continues speaking on a variety of subjects. Resigns from his position with the city and becomes general attorney for the Chicago & North-Western Railway Company in Chicago.
35	1892	Rejects efforts in political circles to convince him to run for Congress or state’s attorney.
36	1893	Resigns from the railroad and accepts a position as assistant corporation counsel for the city. Four months later, resigns that position and forms a law partnership with prominent attorneys and former judges.
37	1894	Represents Patrick Eugene Prendergast, who shot and killed Chicago mayor Carter Harrison Sr. Represents Eugene Debs and several other leaders of the American Railway Union, charged with contempt of a federal court injunction arising out of a strike among employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company.
38	1895	Continues representing Debs and other union leaders when they stand trial again for conspiracy to obstruct the mail. Travels to Europe. After returning, his law partnership dissolves and he establishes a new partnership.
39	1896	Separates from Jessie, who travels with Paul to Europe for several months. Nominated by the Democratic Party for a congressional seat in Chicago but loses the election by approximately three hundred votes.
40	1897	Files a petition for divorce from Jessie, which is granted without contest, on terms agreed to in advance with Jessie.
41	1898	Represents Thomas I. Kidd and other labor leaders who helped organize a strike by the woodworkers at the Paine Lumber Company in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, seeking higher wages, recognition of their union, and the abolition of child labor.
42	1899	Publishes his first book, A Persian Pearl: And Other Essays.
43	1900	Involved in a consumer lawsuit against a utilities company, charging the company with discriminatory pricing.
44	1901	Takes in his friend and former governor of Illinois, John Altgeld, as law partner.
45	1902	Represents, among others, striking machinists in a dispute with the Allis-Chalmers Company, a man charged with defrauding a bank, four men indicted for operating an illegal poolroom and gambling house, three lawyers charged with bribing jurors on behalf of the Union Traction Company, striking members of a streetcar union, a union of striking wholesale grocers, and striking anthracite miners in Pennsylvania. Helps organize a new local bar association. Writes short stories for the Chicago American newspaper. Publishes his second book, Resist Not Evil, a theory of nonresistance heavily influenced by Tolstoy. Elected to the Illinois House of Representatives on the Public Ownership Party ticket, serving one term.
46	1903	Completes the arbitration hearing for the striking anthracite miners in Pennsylvania. Declines to run for mayor of Chicago. Serves in the state legislature, introducing proposed legislation with a variety of objectives, such as abolishing common-law conspiracy, making it unlawful to raise birds for the purpose of shooting them for amusement, abolishing capital punishment, abolishing prison sentences for debts, and prohibiting free railroad passes and telephones and telegraph franks for members of the legislature. Forms a new law partnership, with Edgar Lee Masters (which lasts until 1911). Continues public speaking on topics such as trade unions, crime, municipal ownership, and the plight of Russian and Polish Jews. Represents many unions in labor disputes. Marries Ruby Hamerstrom and travels to Europe on a three-month honeymoon, where he writes a series of travel essays for the Chicago Daily News. Writes an autobiographical novel about his childhood, which is published the following year as Farmington.
47	1904	Represents, among others, John Turner, an anarchist speaker from Great Britain threatened with deportation because of his political speeches; the Chicago Teachers Federation, seeking back wages for teachers; and a law clerk accused of killing his wife. Serves as an editor of a short-lived Chicago literary magazine called Tomorrow. Serves on a committee investigating voter fraud. Participates in the National Democratic Convention in St. Louis, giving a speech supporting a motion to nominate William Randolph Hearst as the presidential candidate. Gives speeches on the open shop, crime, and other subjects. Forms a new political club (called the Jefferson Club) with several friends. Darrow’s father dies in April.
48	1905	Writes a short naturalistic novel, published as An Eye for an Eye, about a man who murders his wife and is sentenced to death. Appointed by the mayor of Chicago as special corporation counsel for the city, with full control of traction litigation and with the goal of achieving municipal ownership of the city railways; resigns from the position approximately six months later after differences with the mayor. Represents, among others, a rector of an Episcopal church claiming that he had been libeled; a physician charged with violating postal laws by selling pills through the mail; a company seeking to copy the indexes, tract book, and records of the County Recorder’s office; the Teamsters Union in a strike; seventy-one-year-old Alice Stockham, charged with sending sexual advice through the mail in the form of a pamphlet for newlyweds titled The Wedding Night; the International Harvester Company, working up evidence to indict its patent agent for defrauding the company; and an abstract company suing a title company. Continues public speaking on a variety of topics.
49	1906	Following his own investigation into the finances of a bank that he helped to start in Chicago, arranges payment (with reimbursement from bank assets later) of all the small, noncommercial depositors, while the bank itself is placed into receivership. Works with the South Side Woman’s Club and others to obtain the right of women to vote in municipal elections. Represents the city in traction cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Hired by the Western Federation of Miners to represent William “Big Bill” Haywood, Charles H. Moyer, and George Pettibone—all of whom were kidnapped by state authorities and private detectives and taken to Idaho, where they were charged with arranging the murder of the former governor of Idaho. Gives many speeches, including one at an African American church in Chicago urging blacks to avoid employment in positions of servitude and criticizing the methods of accommodation and vocational instruction advanced by Booker T. Washington.
50	1907	Defends Steve Adams, an itinerant miner, in Wallace, Idaho, on the charge of murdering a property claim jumper (authorities prosecuting Haywood, Moyer, and Pettibone hoped to use a conviction of Adams to persuade him to reaffirm his earlier confession that he had been hired by Haywood and others to kill the former governor of Idaho). Participates in the trial of Haywood. Writes a series of articles about the trial for newspapers. Publishes his closing argument as a pamphlet. Causes a stir in Spokane, Washington, when he refuses to stand during the national anthem. Represents Adams again, in a retrial, which ends in a hung jury. Begins the trial of Pettibone, leaving at the end of the prosecution’s case in chief (and after his opening statement to the jury) because of an ear infection. Travels to Los Angeles for possible surgery.
51	1908	Operated on for mastoiditis in Los Angeles. Returns to Chicago, where he and Ruby rent an apartment in the Hyde Park area, where they live for the rest of his life (except for two years in Los Angeles). Delivers many speeches, including speeches against Prohibition and on behalf of unions. Represents, among others, a wealthy married woman who was arrested in a rooming house with a man who was not her husband, sixty-six or more men indicted for election fraud, and a Russian refugee (Christian Rudovitz) whose extradition was sought by the Russian government on the charge that he had murdered three people in a Russian village.
52	1909	Represents, among others, a nineteen-year-old man who killed a policeman, arguing to the governor and pardon board to commute the man’s death sentence to life in prison; Sydney Love, a once wealthy stockbroker, in a divorce action; Fred Warren, on trial in Kansas on charges of unlawfully mailing a flyer publicly calling for the kidnapping of the former governor of Kentucky; a banker from Milwaukee convicted of embezzlement and forgery, seeking his release through the parole board; several defendants accused of fixing juries in Cook County; individuals indicted for election fraud; and the receiver for the failed bank in which Darrow had invested, arguing strenuously to the pardon board for no clemency for a convicted officer of the bank. Continues delivering public speeches—on Walt Whitman, Abraham Lincoln, Prohibition, and the sentences of Samuel Gompers, John Mitchell, and Frank Morrison for violating a labor injunction, among other subjects.
53	1910	Represents, among others, alleged jury fixers; a man convicted for killing a plainclothes policeman in a gunfight in a bar; a city engineer accused of fraud as part of an excavation project for the city; peddlers objecting to a new city ordinance prohibiting them from crying their wares on the streets; railroad switchmen in an action seeking higher wages before the state board of arbitration; a railroad charged with bribing members of the Illinois legislature; and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, who were seeking higher wages in an arbitration. Among many public debates and addresses, speaks on jails and penitentiaries; the abuse of the injunction power by judges against labor; progressive thought in Norway and among writers like Björnstjerne Björnson and Henrik Ibsen; and nonresistance. Spoke on the problems of race at the Second Annual National Negro Conference in New York City (during which the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was formed). Writes articles, among others, highly critical of Theodore Roosevelt and the November elections and attacking patriotic sentiments as empty and destructive.
54	1911	Appointed by a judge in Chicago to investigate the charge of a citizens’ association that city officials had colluded with plaintiffs in settling property-damage claims in track-elevation lawsuits. Represents, among others, a railroad engineer in a personal-injury lawsuit against his employer; a group of distillers convicted of defrauding the federal government of revenue taxes; investors (of which Darrow was one) in a lawsuit against two promoters and agents selling a gold mine in California; directors of the Kankakee Manufacturing Company in a fraud claim brought by an investor and sales representative; and a banker and businessman in San Diego fighting extradition to Oregon, where he was sought on a charge of embezzlement. Serves as an arbitrator selected by a union of striking garment workers in a dispute with Hart, Schaffner & Marx. Moves to Los Angeles to defend John J. and James B. McNamara, accused of blowing up the Los Angeles Times Building and killing some of its occupants.
55	1912	Indicted in Los Angeles on two counts of jury bribery following the guilty pleas of the McNamaras. Represented by Earl Rogers and others, as well as being represented by himself, he is acquitted on the first count after several weeks of trial. Goes on a short speaking tour, talking to labor audiences in the West. Also delivers addresses on Ibsen, John Brown, and industrial conspiracies, among other subjects.
56	1913	Stands trial on the second count of jury bribery and does most of the trial work himself, ending with a hung jury and the indictment eventually dismissed. Appears in From Dusk to Dawn, a silent labor film based roughly on recent labor experiences in Los Angeles. Returns to Chicago and attends a banquet in his honor sponsored by the state bar association. Resumes his law business. Lectures on labor, Walt Whitman, socialism, education, the open shop, and Henry George, among other topics. Defends two brothers, both woolen merchants, and an insurance adjuster, all charged with arson in Chicago.
57	1914	Represents, among others, an assistant state’s attorney charged with illegally marking ballots in a general election, an assistant cashier of a bank charged with embezzlement, a black man convicted of murdering a white woman, and two brothers and another young man charged with shooting and murdering a man. Involved in efforts to settle a strike in copper mines in Michigan. Gives public addresses on many topics, including Voltaire, eugenics, legislation, child welfare, socialism and labor, and Prohibition.
58	1915	Represents, among others, an attorney charged with embezzling client funds; Frank Lloyd Wright regarding an accusation that Wright violated the Mann Act by his love affair with a woman; the Children’s National Tuberculosis Society on a charge that it was operating fraudulently as a nonprofit society; a real-estate dealer before the pardon board who had been convicted of forging deeds and notes; and William Lorimer, former U.S. senator, charged with crimes connected to the failure of a bank that Lorimer had founded and for which he was an officer. Gives public talks on a variety of subjects, including war and personal liberties. Testifies before the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, tasked with inquiring into the labor conditions in certain industries and determining the underlying causes of labor unrest.
59	1916	Delivers a moving memorial address for his brother-in-law, J. Howard Moore, who committed suicide. Publishes articles on crime, Nietzsche, and Voltaire, among other topics. Causes a stir by telling members of the Woman’s Law League, as a speaker at their meeting, that women can never be good lawyers because they do not have a high grade of intellect and they are not cold blooded enough. Represents, among others, the chief engineer of the Eastland (a passenger ship that capsized in July 1915 while docked in the Chicago River, killing over eight hundred crew members and passengers), in federal court in Michigan; the writer and suffragist Crystal Eastman, in her divorce proceedings with her first husband; a man with a long criminal record who was reportedly arrested “on principle” for disorderly conduct; a physician (before the pardon board) who had been convicted of murdering his wife; a gypsy who allegedly sold his daughter for two thousand dollars and was fighting extradition from California to Illinois; a father and son charged with criminal conduct involving a failed private bank they operated in Chicago; several members of an allegedly illegal gambling ring, in federal court in Chicago; and a nineteen-year-old boy convicted of robbing and murdering a woman in her apartment.
60	1917	Publicly lectures on topics such as the war, the French entomologist Jean Henri Fabre, heredity versus environment, Tolstoy, and crime and criminals. Engages in public debates, usually with friends, on such questions as “Is life worth living?” “Will democracy cure the ills of the world?” “Is there a law of progress in the world?”—with Darrow always answering in the negative. Writes articles on Arthur Schopenhauer and the war, among other subjects. Represents, among others, the striking International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ union in Chicago, including appealing from contempt orders for violating a labor injunction; Oscar DePriest, a Chicago alderman, on charges of conspiracy to take bribes and extort money, and the former chief of police, Charles Healey, charged as part of the same conspiracy; a pacifist who refused to submit to a medical examination for the draft and was charged with obstructing draft registrations; and twelve-year-old and fifteen-year-old boys charged with murdering a junk dealer by beating him with a baseball bat.
61	1918	Represents, among others, a man who placed a bomb in an opera theatre and who tried to extort money from a banker; a fire-insurance adjuster who was also an arsonist; the stenographer for the insurance adjuster, who perjured herself to protect the adjuster; a ward boss accused of accepting graft money from saloons and others in his ward; a sociologist at the University of Chicago charged in the morals court with disorderly conduct after being arrested in a hotel with a woman who was married to another man; Edward Fielding, head of the Volunteers of America, in a divorce action in which Fielding was alleged to have had a long extramarital affair; and Eugene Debs, seeking his release from prison for violating the federal Espionage Act by a speech against the war. Continues to give public addresses on topics such as the war, crime and punishment, and censorship in films. Participates on a committee to campaign for a state constitutional convention. Meets with the U.S. postmaster general and others to try to convince the government to stop banning publications from the mail. Selected by the federal government, at the request of the British and French governments, to speak in England and France on the war. Writes accounts of his travels that are published in the Chicago Daily Journal. Appointed by the board of education in Chicago to serve on a committee to search for a new superintendent of schools.
62	1919	Represents, among others, an alleged forger of municipal and school bonds; a public lecturer who is charged in morals court with disorderly conduct after allegedly engaging in acts of sadomasochism in a hotel room with a woman to whom he was not married; Emma Simpson, who shot and killed her husband in a courtroom during an argument over alimony in their divorce proceedings; a man charged with killing a detective in a saloon fight; two men convicted of a murder during a bank robbery who were sentenced to die after pleading guilty without the aid of an attorney; the striking Actors’ Equity Association, charged with violating an injunction; and a typhoid carrier operating a boarding house who was quarantined by the health department. Serves on a committee to organize a memorial for Theodore Roosevelt. Debates with other public figures on questions such as “Is the human race permanently progressing toward a better civilization?” “Will socialism save the world?” “Are internationalism and the League of Nations practical and desirable schemes for ending war?” (argues in the negative on each occasion). Continues an active public-speaking schedule, addressing topics as diverse as Walt Whitman, the killing of Jews in Poland, the American Medical Association, war prisoners, and the League of Nations.
63	1920	Represents, among others, Benjamin Gitlow, who helped form the Communist Labor Party in 1919 and who was indicted that same year under New York’s Criminal Anarchy Act for advocating communism; Arthur Person, a workingman and member of the Communist Labor Party in Rockford, Illinois, charged with violating a state law making it a crime to assist or join any organization that advocates change or overthrow of the government; several relatives of the late widow of one of the owners of the Barnum Bailey Circus, in a dispute regarding the widow’s estate; and several officials of a meat-packing company charged with defrauding stockholders. Together with several other lawyers, defends twenty communists in Chicago who are charged with similar offenses, including Henry Demarest Lloyd’s son, William Bross Lloyd; together with Frank Walker and another attorney (dubbed “the million-dollar defense”), represents three men, said to be gangsters, charged with the murder of another gangster. Publicly lectures on subjects such as labor, Jean Henri Fabre, pessimism, materialism. Publicly debates questions such as “Is the human race getting anywhere?” “Is life worth living?” “Is civilization a failure?” (always responding in the negative). Speaks to the judiciary committee of the state constitutional convention, advocating against appointment of judges and favoring the election of judges.
64	1921	Writes a book entitled Crime: Its Cause and Treatment. Debates Scott Nearing on the proposition that “permanent progress for the human race is impossible.” Debates Shirley Jackson Case on the question “Has religion ceased to function?” Addresses the annual meeting of the American Medical Liberty League (“How Liberty Is Lost”). Represents, among others, a stock and bond promoter charged with the murder of his business associate; several men on trial for conspiracy to illegally transport and sell liquor in Chicago; three officials of the upholsterers’ union, including the vice president of the international organization, charged with beatings and bombings during a strike; four men charged with robbing a bank in Indiana and murdering a man in the process of their getaway; Vincent St. John, a mine worker and one of the founders of the Industrial Workers of the World, convicted of violating the Espionage Act of 1917; and Harold McCormick, president of the International Harvester Company, in his divorce from his wife, Edith McCormick, daughter of John D. Rockefeller Sr.
65	1922	Represents, among others, a nineteen-year-old woman labeled in the press as the “boulevard vamp,” who allegedly lured a man to a forest preserve where he was attacked and robbed; and three men accused of participating in graft with the public school system. Spends nearly three months traveling in Europe and the Middle East. Opposes a new proposed state constitution for Illinois that followed from a state constitutional convention; among other objections, opposes the provisions that would grant judges the right to deny bail, that would expressly allow public schools to have readings of the bible, and that would politicize the judiciary by allowing the supreme court to select lower appellate judges.
66	1923	Represents, among others, a state official and others accused of selling physicians’ and pharmacists’ licenses to unqualified people; a president of a bank charged with embezzlement; a Ukrainian schoolteacher who shot a priest during a church service; an inspector of airplanes for the army signal corps charged with misuse of funds; Fred Lundin, a businessman and former Republican congressman, who, along with many other men, including city officials, was indicted and tried for conspiracy to defraud the Chicago school system of some $1 million through bribes, phony contracts and bids, and excessive purchase prices for supplies; four men alleged to be part of a vice ring, accused of murdering a rival in Rock Island, Illinois; and several individuals charged in federal court with violating the Volstead Act in a scheme whereby they sold stock in a company whose assets were liquor, which were then distributed to the stockholders when the company went out of business. Continues his public debates and speeches.
67	1924	Represents, among others, a former president of the board of local improvements in Chicago and an official of a paving company, both charged with fraudulent contracts regarding bridge improvements; a beer runner charged with violating the Volstead Act; Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two wealthy young men who kidnapped and murdered a fourteen-year-old boy in Chicago and confessed to the crime after their arrest; and an eighteen-year-old boy charged with vehicular manslaughter. Elected as a delegate to the national Democratic convention but does not attend because of his work on Leopold and Loeb’s case. Issues a written statement of support for the development of a hospital in New York to treat mental disorders. Speaks at the annual dinner of the Walt Whitman Fellowship in Chicago. Presides at a political debate in New York between Samuel Untermyer and Morris Hillquit. Continues public debates and speaking on a variety of subjects.
68	1925	Represents, among others, a wealthy man charged with vehicular manslaughter after his automobile hits and kills an eighty-year-old farmer driving a truck; a riding master who stands trial for shooting and killing the owner of a riding academy with whom he was romantically involved; the wife of a former minister of a wealthy Congregational church, in a divorce action; John Scopes, a high school teacher who agreed to serve as a defendant to test a recently enacted law that prohibited teaching the theory of evolution in Tennessee public schools; a fourteen-year-old black boy who stabbed a white boy to death in a schoolyard fight; and a black physician (Ossian Sweet) and his family in Detroit, Michigan, who were charged with conspiracy to commit murder and assault after shots were fired from their new house in a white neighborhood, where a hostile crowd had gathered outside. Publicly debates, among other subjects, the responsibility of criminals and the purpose of punishment, and the question “Does the mechanistic theory explain man?” Writes an introduction to the autobiography of Mother Jones and writes articles on eugenics, the methods of salesmanship, and other topics. Speaks at meetings in Harlem to raise funds for the defense of the Sweets.
69	1926	Represents Ossian Sweet’s brother, who admitted to shooting from the house, in a separate trial. Testifies before a judiciary subcommittee in the U.S. House of Representatives in support of a bill to abolish capital punishment in the District of Columbia. Publicly debates the merits of the World Court, which he argues is dangerous and futile. On a radio station in Chicago, publicly debates Wayne Wheeler, the leader of the Anti-Saloon League, on whether Prohibition is a failure. Writes book reviews and articles on eugenics, crime, John Brown, Prohibition, and other subjects.
70	1927	Attends a celebration of his birthday at the Palmer House in Chicago, with 1,200 people in attendance. Writes an anti-Prohibition book with Victor Yarros, which is published as The Prohibition Mania. Travels with Ruby to England—where they meet many writers and popular figures, including Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, James Frazer, and A.E. Housman—and then to Paris and other cities. Represents, among others, a convicted murderer before the Vermont Supreme Court who was sentenced to die, two black men convicted and sentenced to death (before Darrow represented them) for the murder of a grocer during a robbery, and two anti-fascists indicted for the murder of two Italian fascists in the Bronx. Publicly debates Prohibition and questions such as “Is Man a Machine?” “Can the Individual Control His Conduct?” “Is Zionism a Progressive Policy for Israel and for America?” “Will Democracy Give Way to Dictatorship?” Writes book reviews and articles on Prohibition, religion and science, crime, divorce, and education, among other subjects.
71	1928	Blacklisted as a speaker by the Daughters of the American Revolution. Also barred by the National Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance of America from speaking in its members’ churches. Continues giving many public lectures and participates frequently in debates with other public figures on questions such as race relations and immigration. Campaigns for Al Smith for president. Writes for several popular magazines, including Scribner’s Magazine, Vanity Fair, and McCall’s, on a variety of subjects, including capital punishment, fundamentalism, women on juries, Prohibition, and crime. Defends a man in Jefferson, Ohio, accused of bribery.
72	1929	Testifies in the Illinois state senate in opposition to a bill that would authorize the judiciary (rather than the legislature) to make rules of procedure for courts. Delivers a speech in Boston opposing censorship and the next day reads passages from Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy to a jury. Travels to Europe with Ruby in July and remains in England, Switzerland, and France until the following spring. Addresses the American Club in Paris. Loses a substantial amount of money in the stock market crash. Writes book reviews and articles, including articles on Prohibition, Herbert Hoover, farmers, and crime. Compiles, with Wallace Rice, an anthology of verse and prose on agnosticism, religion, God, morals, and many other subjects, entitled Infidels and Heretics.
73	1930	Represents, among others, two reputed mobsters in Chicago, arrested for violation of vagrancy laws; and a bank clerk charged with embezzlement. Lectures and debates throughout the country in opposition to Prohibition, including a debate tour in many cities with the Rev. Clarence True Wilson. Participates in a radio dramatization of the trial of Benedict Arnold on the charge of treason. Writes several articles on Prohibition and religion, among other subjects.
74	1931	Appears in and narrates a movie about evolution titled The Mystery of Life, which was produced by Universal; the movie is banned by some theatres, restricted to adults in others, and criticized as anti-biblical and anti-Christian by ministers and others. Gives addresses on crime, Walt Whitman, and other subjects. Debates the question “Will the world return to religion?” with G.K. Chesterton in New York City. Debates the subject of religion with several other people who support one religion or another. Travels to several major cities in the South debating religion in each one with a Jew, a Catholic, and a Protestant. Writes an editorial on the causes of recent prison riots at the Illinois prisons. Represents, among others, a seventeen-year-old sentenced to death for killing a streetcar conductor during a robbery; a young black woman who worked as a secretary at a bank that failed and who was charged with criminal acts that led to the failure of the bank; and, briefly, at the invitation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the “Scottsboro” defendants—nine black youths, ranging from twelve to nineteen years of age, all poor and generally illiterate, convicted of raping two white women in a railroad freight car traveling through Alabama.
75	1932	Finishes his autobiography, The Story of My Life, which is published by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Debates questions such as “Is life worth living?” and “Is religion necessary?” Travels to Hawaii to represent Lieutenant Thomas Massie (an officer in the United States Navy), Massie’s mother-in-law, and two enlisted men, all charged with the murder of a native Hawaiian whom they believed had participated in beating and raping Massie’s wife. Gives an address to the Chicago Bar Association on race relations and the law in Hawaii. Represents, among others, an owner of some brewing equipment and related materials that were seized in a federal raid; a man who robbed a beauty parlor after losing his grocery business; and a seventeen-year-old youth sentenced to death for murdering a man during a holdup in Chicago. Among other items, writes a supplemental chapter for his autobiography on the Massie trial, an article on the concept of justice for Scribner’s Magazine, and a short piece on the Scottsboro case for Crisis magazine.
76	1933	Speaks at the annual conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Chicago and speaks to a large audience in Chicago protesting spending cuts by the school board. Participates in the defense of farmers in Iowa who abducted and threatened to lynch a judge in an effort to halt mortgage foreclosures.
77	1934	Serves as chair of President Roosevelt’s new National Recovery Review Board, which issues three controversial reports critical of the National Recovery Administration.
79	1936	Appears before the parole board at Joliet, Illinois, to urge the release of a seventy-one-year-old African American banker who had been convicted of embezzlement.
	1938	Dies in Chicago on March 13 at the age of eighty. His ashes are scattered in Jackson Park, Chicago.