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The John Batchelor Show

S8 Ep342: Guest: Brenda Wineapple. The ACLU, seeking to defend religious liberty and raise its profile, seized upon the Scopes case. While the board considered prestigious constitutional lawyers, the notorious Clarence Darrow volunteered his services pro bono becau

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

Arts, News, Books, Society & Culture

4.62.7K Ratings

🗓️ 20 January 2026

⏱️ 11 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Guest: Brenda Wineapple. The ACLU, seeking to defend religious liberty and raise its profile, seized upon the Scopescase. While the board considered prestigious constitutional lawyers, the notorious Clarence Darrow volunteered his services pro bono because he viewed the Butler Act as bigoted. Despite the ACLU's hesitation regarding Darrow'scontroversial reputation from the Leopold and Loeb trial, Scopes insisted on having the "street fighter" Darrow defend him against William Jennings Bryan.
1925 CLARENCE DARROW QUESTIONS WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN.

Transcript

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0:00.0

I'm John Batchel, visiting with Brenda Wineapple, her new book, Keeping the Faith, God, Democracy, and the trial that riveted a nation.

0:23.5

The ACLU intends to challenge the Tennessee law. The Tennessee law is going to be very much represented

0:31.2

not only by its own prosecutors, local in Dayton, Tennessee, and also men who are interested from the state capital.

0:39.1

But a man named Brian, William Jennings, Brian, who is as famous in 1925 as you can be,

0:47.1

given him coming out of having run for the presidency three times, and been Woodrow Wilson,

0:52.2

Secretary of State. What we're looking at here, Secretary of State,

0:56.8

what we're looking at here is names that everybody knew right away. Why did they know Clarence Darrow?

1:04.5

Who is he? Where did he come from? The man is skillful in courtroom drama.

1:13.1

He's extremely well spoken.

1:20.2

Right away, we have to start with how he got to have such a reputation in the courtroom.

1:26.7

He goes to Chicago from small town America, and he meets up with a man named Altgeld,

1:29.2

who becomes his mentor. Who is Altgeld,

1:37.0

Brenda? John Altgoltz, I think he would be better known today had he not died early on. He was a very outspoken, socialist-leaning, shall we say, progressive, who was governor in Illinois.

1:47.6

I mean, he was a big figure in Chicago.

1:50.0

He had made a lot of money investing in real estate.

1:53.4

He later lost all of that money.

1:55.1

And when young Darrow came to Chicago from small town in Ohio.

2:03.6

He and Alpka Geld became very, very good friends.

2:07.5

And Alvgad really got Darrow on his way.

2:10.4

But Alka was a person who really felt that, for example, poverty was the cause of crime, not that people were necessary,

2:21.3

not that they were at all bad people, but the conditions, social conditions that surround people

2:27.9

cause crime, and that was poverty. And Darrow learned a great deal from Altgeld.

...

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