CLARENCE DARROW - INSCRIBED BOOK PHOTOGRAPH SIGNED 12/25/1932 - HFSID 285963

CLARENCE DARROW
Black and white publicity photograph of Clarence Darrow wearing a suit and tie inscribed to Robert R. Gros.
Book Photograph signed and inscribed: "Clarence Darrow/To Robert R. Gros/With kind regard/Dec. 25th 1932". B/w, 9¾x11½ overall, image 7½x9½ (one surface). Attorney CLARENCE DARROW (1857-1938), who specialized in corporate law, shot to fame in 1894, when he defended American Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs, President of the American Railroad Union, arrested on a federal contempt of court charge arising from a strike at the Chicago Pullman Palace Car Company. Although Darrow lost the case, he won a national reputation as a champion of radical causes. A brilliant orator and a master of reforming the law, framing pleas and eliciting evidence, he became one of America's most renowned defense lawyers, and he used his position to campaign against capital punishment. In his sixties, Darrow successfully defended Leopold and Loeb (1924) in getting life imprisonment instead of death for kidnapping and killing a 13-year-old boy. In 1925, he defended John T. Scopes, accused of violating a Tennessee law by teaching evolution, in the "Scopes Monkey Trial". Darrow's autobiography, The Story of My Life, was published in 1932. ROBERT R. GROS was national director of the Navy League of the United States from 1949-1972. He participated in the birth of the UN in San Francisco in 1945 as an advisor to the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet. Creased and torn right edge and lower right corner. Vertical fold touches some words of inscription but not signature. Horizontal fold runs across his upper face. Slight nick on left edge.