LIFE AT THE PRICE OF COWARDICE IS DISHONOR

JFK+50:  Volume 7, No. 2421

DARROW DEFENDS U.S. ENTRY INTO WWI

Rockford, Illinois (JFK+50) 100 years ago today, September 3, 1917, criminal attorney Clarence Darrow*, speaking before an audience of 10,000 "representing the labor army of Rockford and Camp Grant," said...

"Life at the price of cowardice is dishonor and not worth keeping."

Mr. Darrow's speech was given in Blackhawk Park**, "the local Mecca for Socialist expression."  He defended America's entry into the world war and "battered down all defenses of the pacifist."

He concluded...

"Whether the war lasts one or fifty years, it must go on until Prussian militarism is crushed."

*Clarence Seward Darrow (1857-1938) was born in Kinsman, Ohio & studied at Allegheny College & University of Michigan.  Despite not earning a degree, he became an internationally famous criminal lawyer who, in more than 100 murder trials, never lost a client to hanging or the electric chair.  One of his most famous cases was the defense to John T. Scopes in the Dayton, Tennessee "monkey trial" of 1925.

**Blackhawk Park is located at 101 15th Avenue in Rockford, Illinois.

SOURCES

"Blackhawk Park", www.virtualrockford.com/

"Clarence Darrow Is Dead In Chicago," On This Day, New York Times, March 14, 1938, www.nytimes.com/

"Darrow Stirs Big Labor Army To War Cheers'", Chicago Daily Tribune, September 4, 1917.

Clarence Darrow

1922

Library of Congress Photo