While best known to most for his victory in the Scopes Monkey Trial, Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) initially gained fame as America’s leading labor attorney. After resigning as a railroad attorney to represent Eugene Debs in 1894, Darrow went on to represent strikers and labor leaders around the country and was also a strong critic of the death penalty. In 1912, Darrow had his last major labor case when he defended the Los Angeles Times bombers in the trial of the “crime of the century.” After the trial, Darrow was tried but acquitted on charges of bribing jurors. Regardless, Samuel Gompers and other labor leaders distanced themselves from Darrow, prompting Darrow to become primarily a criminal attorney. Read more about it!

The information in this guide focuses on primary source materials found in the digitized historic newspapers from the digital collection Chronicling America.

The timeline below highlights important dates related to this topic and a section of this guide provides some suggested search strategies for further research in the collection.