Darrow v. Klan

Down Mobile way, darkies croon to the night on soft spring evenings, grin, tip hats, as they shuffle past white "gemmen," still their noble lords if not their masters. Fortnight ago, Clarence Darrow, keen-witted, sharp-tongued Northern lawyer, stopped in Mobile, Ala., made speeches to wide-mouthed black men attacking Negro lynchings. On street corners hot-blooded white men gathered, muttered curses on Mr. Darrow, "damned Yankee" agitator. At Negro schools, able Lawyer Darrow repeated his speeches to the "new Negro." Klan circulars said he said: "Resist your white masters. ... I see you pray, but to what good? . . . Your God must be white considering the way he treats you. No doubt there will be a 'Jim Crow' law in your heaven. I heard you sing 'Sweet Land of Liberty' but I don't see how you do it. ... But . . . you have some friends not afraid to sit at the table with you. I have done so, and I've drunk bootleg liquor with you, and in what better way can friendship be manifested?"

Old Mobile seethed in righteous wrath. In homes, in clubs, on streets, audible threats of tar-barrels, feathers, the noose rose out of mutterings and fist-shakings. One evening last week warnings from county officials came to Mr. Darrow, plain-clothes men grouped themselves about his door; on the next morning he fled on the noon train to Chattanooga throwing a parting word of denial of what the Klan said he said, planned to return North.