Gale Encyclopedia Of American Law 3Rd Edition Volume 3 P38 pot

Darrow in the face: the PULLMAN STRIKE of 1894. This bitter dispute pitted the workers of the newly formed American Railway Union (ARU) against the powerful Pullman Company and its railroad industry allies. The conflict was so violent that President Grover Cleveland sent in army troops to protect the trains. Darrow resigned his corporate position with CNR despite enticing offers of higher pay. Instead, he took the case of the ARU’s national leader EUGENE V. DEBS, who was charged with violating a strike injunction. Darrow’s defense strategy was not to quibble about the violation of an injunction order but to expose the working conditions imposed upon railroad workers by the industry—in this case, the enormously wealthy Pullman Company. To do this, Darrow boldly subpoenaed company presi- dent George M. Pullman to testify, but the tycoon went into hiding rather than appear. So, after describing the abysmal working conditions of Pullman’s railroad workers and their families, he argued fervently that people had a right to strike for just causes, and that adequate wages and safe working conditions were such causes. Darrow defended Debs in two trials—taking an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court before finally losing and seeing his client sentenced to six months in prison. In this defense of the underdog against the powerful, Darrow had found his calling. In just six years, Darrow had moved from positions of political power and financial security to that of gladiator in the nation’s emerging class struggle. In 1894 Darrow handled his first crimina l case in Chicago, defending Eugene Prendergast. Prendergast was a mentally ill drifter who had murdered Mayor Carter H. Harrison, Sr., of Chicago, then walked to a police station and confessed to the crime. Darrow attempted an INSANITY DEFENSE and failed, and Prendergast was executed. Of the 50 MURDER defendants Darrow represented in his lifetime, this was the first and last one he lost to execution. In 1897 Darrow divorced his wife of 17 years. In 1903 he married Ruby Hamerstrom, a Chicago newspaper journalist. This second MARRIAGE for Darrow lasted for the rest of his lifetime but produced no children. In 1907 the former governor of Idaho Frank Steunenberg was killed by a booby trap bomb on his front gate. Steunenberg had been a powerful supporter of the mining industry. William (“Big Bill”) Haywood, leader of the Western Federation of Miners union, and several others were abducted by PINKERTON AGENTS from other states and brought to Boise, where they were charged with conspiracy to murder. The miners’ union hired Darrow for the defense, and he traveled with Ruby to Idaho and assembled a defense team. The prominence of the individuals involved and the violent nature of the crime drew national attention to the trial. Darrow was able to crack the government’s case with painstaking CROSS-EXAMINATION of its star witness, the self- confessed PERPETRATOR of the crime, Harry Orchard. Darrow exposed Orchard to be a man bent on personal revenge who had implicated the labor leaders only after being prompted to do so by the prosecutors. Darrow’s moving summation in defense of the labor movement— “for the poor, for the weak, for the weary— who, in darkness and despair, have borne the labors of the human race”—drew tears in the courtroom, and Haywood and the others were acquitted. Thanks to Darrow, labor was again vindi- cated over oppone nts in government and industry. But the cost to Darrow was consider- able. After the trial, he was broke and in poor health. His legal fees from the union had already been spent, and he suffered from an acute ear infection. When he returned to Chicago, the financial crash of 1907 had wiped out all of his savings, and he returned to his law practice. Darrow reluctantly entered the limelight again in 1911, when he agreed to defend the accused in what newspapers called the crime of the century. At one o’clock in the morning on October 10, 1910, Los Angeles was rocked by two explosions that blew apart the Los Angeles Times Building with more than one hundred people inside. Twenty-one people were killed and 40 injured in the concussion and the fire that followed. The Times’s prominent and antiunion editor, Harrison Gray Otis, managed to get out an edition with the headline “Unionist Bombs Wreck Times.” Under pressure from Otis, the mayor of Los Angeles hired a private detective agency to investigate and abduct labor movement suspects living in Indiana and Michigan and return them to Los Angeles to stand trial. Labor movement members appealed to Darrow, but he resisted, still drained and wary from the Haywood defense. GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 358 DARROW, CLARENCE SEWARD Renowned labor leader SAMUEL GOMPERS, then president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), visited Darrow in Chicago and appealed to him to defend labor, the innocent, and due process. In return, Gompers promised that a nationwide AFL union war chest would gener- ously compensate him for his services. Darrow agreed. By the time Darrow arrived in Los Angeles, the three defendants had already confes sed to the crime. Darrow entered guilty pleas on their behalf in an attempt to save them from execution. The shock and outrage from labor supporters were devastating. Darrow was jeered by a waiting crowd and shunned by Gompers and other labor leaders. The promised legal fees evaporated. Within days, Darrow was charged with attempting to bribe the jury and was brought to trial. Away from hom e, and without funds or allies to make a strong defense, Darrow fell into a depression that lasted through most of the proceedings. But in the closing arguments, he arose to defend himself to the jury with such force and poignancy that he again brought the jury, the audience, the press, and even the judge to tears. When the VERDICT came, and Darrow was acquitted, the courtroom burst into sus- tained cheers and embraces. Darrow never again took a major labor case. Darrow continued to take the unpopu lar route in his court cases. When the United States entered WORLD WAR I despite a strong pacifist movement, Darrow managed to offend people on both sides of the war issue by personally supporting the war while professionally defend- ing pacifists who refused to serve. Darrow’s choice of clients in a notorious murder case further outraged popular senti- ments. In 1924, two Chicago teens from mil- lionaire families—Richard Loeb, age 18, an d Nathan Leopold Jr., age 19—decided to commit a murder for the thrill of it. Loeb had graduated with honors from the University of Michigan and was on his way to Harvard Law School. Leopold was a Phi Beta Kappa member, already attending law school. They thought they were clever enough that they would not get caught. Luring a 14-year-old friend named Bobby Franks into their car, Loeb killed Franks with a chisel. The two then stuffed his body into the trunk before sending ransom notes to the boy’s millionaire family. Two days after the boys had been caught, had been charged, and had confessed, three members of the Loeb family came to Darrow’s home in the early morning before he had yet awakened and insisted on making their way to his bedside to beg him to take the case. As a friend of the family, and because of their desperation, Darrow accepted. Hoping to save the boys from execution, Darrow had his clients plead guilty and then presented expert scientific testimony from 14 psychiatrists and psychologists. These witnesses contended that the boys suffered from a mental illness that caused them to commit the crime. Loeb and Leopold received life sentences. This verdict was extremely unpopular with the public, for many had called for the death penalty for this unusually grisly murder. Darrow was attacked in the press and threatened in the mail, and the millionaire families who had begged him to save their children balked at paying the agreed legal fees. Darrow, by then age 67, spoke of retiring from legal work unless he could really “have some fun” doing it. The following year, he got his chance. Intent on stemming the influence of modern- ist thinking in the schools, in 1925 the Tennessee legislature passed a law making it illegal to teach anything that contradicted the account of the Creation portrayed in the Bible’s book of Genesis. With the help of local citizens and the support of the AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION (ACLU), a 24-year-old biology teacher in rural Dayton, a Tennessee native named John T. Scopes, chal- lenged the law by teaching the evolutionary theories of Charles R. Darwin in his high-school classroom. WhenScopes wasarrested and charged with violating the law, WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN,a well-known former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, agreed to serve as counsel for the prosecution. At Scopes’s insistence, the ACLU recruited the most controversial defense attorney and atheist in the country, Darrow. For nearly a century, European scholars in linguistics and geology, as well as in Darwin’s biology, had contested certain beliefs about the Bible, which left many of the faithful anxious. The fundamentalists in the Tennessee legislature had attempted one solution to this problem: forbid the teaching of anything in conflict with creation- ism in the public schools. Because Darrow passionately opposed this in principle and was no friend of religion, he happily took the case. The trial drew enormous media attention in the form of international newspaper coverage GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION DARROW, CLARENCE SEWARD 359 and live nationwide radio broadcasts. The popular Henry L. Mencken covered the story and joined other major newspaper reporters in calling it the “Monkey Trial.” Because the weather was hot and muggy, and the trial had drawn more than 2,000 visitors, the judge moved the proceedings outside the courthouse onto a platform built for the occasion. There, the two masters of law and rhetoric sparred before a stirred crowd and an internationa l audience. The trial was ostensibly intended to determine whether Scopes had violated the law, which clearly he had purposely done. But the exchanges between Bryan and Darrow quickly revealed deeper issues, such as the constitution- al guarantee of free speech and the struggle between fundamentalist and modernist inter- pretations of the Bible. This time, Darrow’s favorite strategies of elevating the crime to a context of higher issues and presenting expert SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE did not work. The presiding judge repeatedly upheld objections to these defense tactics. So, knowing that the local folk were overwhelmingly fundamentalist and that they saw Bryan as their champion, Darrow took a masterful gamble and put Bryan himself on the stand as a Bible expert for the defense. In a series of deft and probing questions about the Bible, Darrow managed to so befuddle the champion of fundamentalism that the crowds were finally laughing with Darrow and at Bryan. To many observers, Bryan and his cause were humiliated. Although the jury voted to convict, the judge imposed only a nominal fine of $100 on Scopes, who was immediat ely rehired by the school board. Five days later, after eating a characteristically heavy meal, Bryan died in his sleep. Many believed that the devastating cross- examination by Darrow and the court’s decision against imposing a larger fine upon Scopes were the cause of Bryan’s death. After the Scopes trial, Darrow became a public celebrity once again. He received many invitations to speak and to debate the issue of religion. As he had in the Pullman case, Darrow lost in the courts but seemingly won before a wider audience. A year later, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP) asked Darrow to defend 11 blacks in Detroit who were being charged in the death of a single white during an ugly racial incident. Darrow again, at age 69, called upon his powerful defense skills to prove that none of the accused had fired the fatal bullet but that all were instead the target of racial prejudice. All charges were dismissed. In 1934 President FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT appointed Darrow, at age 77, to head a commission to adjust inequities in the law for the National Industrial RECOVERY Act, a program intended to relieve the Depression. Darrow’ s work proved successful when the Supreme Court declared the la w unconstitutional, and the necessary revisions were made. The same year, Darrow was asked to chair the opening session of the American Inquiry Commission, a citizens’ committee to study the darkening events in Germany. He emerged to tell Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, of New York, at lunch that “Herr Hitler is a very dangerous man and should be destroyed.” Darrow died in Chicago in 1938, at the age of 81. He had asked his friend Judge William H. Holly to deliver his eulogy because, as Darrow put it, “he knows everything about me, and has the sense not to tell it.” As Darrow’s body lay in state in Chicago for two days, thousands from every sector of humanity lined up in a driving rain to say good-bye. The tributes to Darrow were bountiful. He was commended for his courage and compassion; his public service and his private practice; his support for labor, minority groups, poor people, and criminals; and, always, his defense of freedom. Although his popularity rose and fell dur ing his lifetime , Darrow’s memory has received the highest accolades. Popular and scholarly biographies, as well as theater, cinema, and television drama- tizations of his impassioned career and complex life, have won for Darrow a legendary stature in U.S. law and history. Despite wavering public opinion, fickle allies, and powerful opponents, he was an uncom- monly skillful and courageous warrior for justice in the courts and in public life. The secret of his courage was revealed in a memorial comment by the eminent attorney JOSEPH N. WELCH: Darrow was “so brave and fearless that he never seemed to realize he was either.” FURTHER READINGS Cowan, Geoffrey. 1999. “A Man for Some Seasons.” American Lawyer 21 (December). Available online at http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/ DarrowCowan.html; website home page: http://www .law.umkc.edu (accessed July 19, 2009). GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 360 DARROW, CLARENCE SEWARD ———. 1993. The People v. Clarence Darrow. New York: Crown. Darrow, Clarence. 1996. The Story of My Life. New York: Da Capo. Driemen, John E. 1992. Clarence Darrow. New York: Chelsea House. Tierney, Kevin. 1979. Darrow: A Biography. New York: Crowell. Uelmen, Gerald F. 2000. “Who is the Lawyer of the Century?” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 33 (January). Available online at http://llr.lls.edu/volumes/v33-issue2/uelman. pdf; website home page: http://llr.lls.edu (accessed July 19, 2009). Vine, Phyllis. 2005. One Man’s Castle: Clarence Darrow in Defense of the American Dream. New York: Harper- Collins. Weinberg, Arthur, and Lila Weinberg. 1987. Clarence Darrow: A Sentimental Rebel. New York: Atheneum. CROSS REFERENCES Haymarket Riot; Labor Union; Leop old and Loeb Trial; Scopes Monkey Trial. DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE See TRUSTEES OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE V. WOODWARD. DAUBERT TEST In 1993 the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the seminal decision of Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, 509 U.S. 579, 113 S.Ct. 2786, 125 L.Ed.2d 469, (U.S. Jun 28, 1993) (NO. 92-102). The case involved the admissi- bility of novel SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE. But to begin to understand the significance of Daubert, one needs to view the case in its wider context, going back 70 years to Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013 (D.C. Cir. 1923). Frye involved the admissibility of OPINION EVIDENCE based upon the use of an early version of the POLYGRAPH. The D.C. CIRCUIT COURT held that scientific evidence was admissible if it was based on a scientific technique generally accepted as reliable in the scientific community. Thus, EXPERT TESTIMONY was admitted based on the expert’s credentials, experience, skill, and repu- tation. The theory was that deficiencies or flaws in the expert’s conclusions would be exposed through CROSS-EXAMINATION. This decision be- came known as the Frye test or the general- acceptance test. By the 1990s, the Frye test had become the majority view in federal and state courts for the admissibility of new or unusual scientific evidence, even in view of Federal Rule of Evidence 702, passed in 1975, which some courts believed to provide a more flexible test for admi ssibility of opinion testimony by expert witnesses. Then, in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharma- ceuticals, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court changed the standard for admissibility of expert testimony. Under Daubert, a trial judge has a duty to scrutinize evidence more rigorously to deter- mine whether it meets the requirements of Federal Rule of Evidence 702. This rule states, “If scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to under- stand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or edu- cation, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise, if (1) the testimony is based upon sufficient facts or data, (2) the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods, and (3) the witness has applied the principles and methods reliably to the facts of the case.” In Daubert, the Court stated that evidence based on innovative or unusual scientific knowl- edge may be admitted only after it has been established that the evidence is reliable and scientifically valid. The Court also imposed a gatekeeping function on trial judges by charg- ing them with preventing “junk science” from entering the courtroom as evidence. To that end, Daubert outlined four considerations: testing, peer review, error rates, and acceptabil- ity in the relevant scientific community. These four tests for reliability are known as the Daubert factors or the Da ubert test. In 1999 the U.S. Supreme Court significant- ly broadened that test and the trial court’s gatekeeping role to include expert testimony based on technical and other specialized knowledge (Kumho Tire Co., Ltd. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137, 119 S.Ct. 1167, 143 L.Ed.2d 238 [U.S. Mar 23, 1999] [NO. 97-1709]). In Kumho, the Court held that the gatekeeping obligation imposed upon tria l judges by Daubert applies to scientific testimony as well as to expert opinion testimony. In order to meet its gatekeeping obligation, a trial court may use the criteria identified in Daubert only when they can be applied to determine the reliability of either the underlying scientific technique or the expert’s conclusions. But inasmuch as the Daubert gatekeeping function is meant to be a flexible one, it must necessarily be tied to the particular facts of a case. Thus, the factors identified in GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION DAUBERT TEST 361 Daubert do not constitute an exhaustive check- list or a definitive litmus test. In Kumho, the Court continued to grant trial judges a great deal of discretion. The Court generally permits trial judges to apply any useful factors that will assist the trial court in making a determination of reliab ility of proffered evi- dence as deemed appropriate in the particular case. The trial judge may use these factors whether they are identified in Daubert or elsewhere. Despite Daubert and the cases that have followed in its aftermath, several issues involv- ing expert testimo ny remain unresolved, and courts have reached various conclusions on these questions. One such question arises from the U.S. Supreme Court’s language defining scientific knowledge. A related issue involves identifying four specific factors by which reliability of such knowledge was to be deter- mined. In forming this definition, the Court drew almost exclusively from the physical sciences. But critics have argued that the Daubert factors are not easily applied to many other types of expert testimony, particularly those that depended on unique skills, generalized knowl- edge and experience, technical prowess, or even on applied science or clinical judgment. Another unresolved issue is whether a Daubert inquiry would even be required at all when a court is considering non-scientific expert opinion evi- dence, or when a particular technique already hadgainedwidespreadjudicialacceptance. FURTHER READINGS Dixon, Lloyd, and Brian Gill. 2001. Changes in the Standards for Admitting Expert Evidence in Federal Civil Cases since the Daubert Decision. Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand. Florida Bar Continuing Legal Education Committee and the Business Law Section. 1999. Daubert and Kumho Tire: The Law, Science and Economics of Expert Testimony in Business Litigation. Tallahassee, Fla.: Florida Bar. Kramer, Larry, ed. 1996. Reforming the Civil Justice System (Justice and Judicial Administration). New York: New York Univ. Press. Smith, Frederick T. 2000. Daubert and Its Progeny: Scientific Evidence in Product Liability Litigation. Washington, D.C.: Washington Legal Foundation. v DAUGHERTY, HARRY MICAJAH Harry Micajah Daugherty served as the 51st attorney general of the United States, under Presidents WARREN G. HARDING and CALVIN COOL- IDGE , but left office with his reputation forever tainted by accusations of political corruption and scandal. Daugherty was born in Ohio on January 26, 1860, in a town called Washington Court House. He received his law degree in 1881 from the University of Michigan. He moved back to Ohio and was admitted to the state bar. Daugherty began practicing law in his home- town before entering politics. Dau gherty be- came township clerk and, in 1890, was elected to the Ohio General Assembly. The ambitious Daugherty served two terms in the assembly before moving to Colum bus in 1894. In Columbus he established a lucrative corporate law practice and continued to build his connec- tions withi n the REPUBLICAN PARTY. Daugherty ran for state attorney general in 1895 and lost. In 1897, he failed in his attempt to become governor of Ohio. In 1902, Daugherty established the law firm of Daugherty, Todd & Rarey; he remained a senior member of the firm until his appoint- ment as U.S. attorney general in 1921. Daugh- erty had become acquainted with rising Republican star Warren G. Harding, who served as lieutenant governor of Ohio from 1904 to ▼▼ ▼▼ Harry Micajah Daugherty 1860–1941 18501850 19001900 19251925 19501950 18751875 ❖ ◆ ◆ ❖ ◆ ◆ 1941 Died, Columbus, Ohio 1939–45 World War II 1922 Judicial Conference of the United States established 1914–18 World War I 1924 Implicated in Teapot Dome Scandal; resigned attorney generalship; acquitted 1921–24 Served as U.S. attorney general 1902 Established law firm of Daugherty, Todd & Rarey 1890–94 Member of Ohio General Assembly 1881 Earned LL.B. from University of Michigan 1860 Born, Washington Court House, Ohio GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 362 DAUGHERTY, HARRY MICAJAH 1905. Daugherty became involved in Harding’s campaigns, which included an unsuccessful run for governor in 1910. Daugherty managed Harding’s successful campaign for the U.S. Senate in 1914. At the 1920 Republican Convention, a standoff developed between supporters of the presidential candidacies of former Army Chief of Staff General Leonard Wood and Illinois Governor Frank O. Lowden. Although Harding had introduced no significant national legisla- tion and was not known for his leadership abilities, Daugherty and a group of Harding’s political supporters managed to position him as the ideal compromise candidate to break the deadlock. Harding was elected as the Republi- can party nominee on the 10th ballot and went on to become the 29th PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES . In return for his help and support, Harding appointed Daugherty U.S. attorney general in 1921. U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT , faced with a backlog of cases in the federal courts and efforts by some congress- men to end lifetime tenure for federal judges, had sought judicial reform by proposing the creation of a conference of judges to assess lower court needs. He also suggested the appointment of at-large judges who could be assigned as needed to various courts. Daugherty joined with Taft to urge Congress to pass the proposed legislation. In 1922 Congress established what ultimately became the JUDICIAL CONFERENCE OF THE UNITED STATES . Daugherty and many of the Ohio Repub- licans who had helped Harding achieve the presidency moved to Washington with him, and became mired in allegations of corrupt self- enrichment schemes. Harding’s sudden death in August 1923 and the succession of Calvin Coolidge as president happened just as the public was beginning to become aware of the machinations of those the press dubbed the “Ohio Gang.” Daugherty was acquitted of charges that he was directly involved in the most famous of these scandals, the TEAPOT DOME SCANDAL, where the secretary of the interior was accused of arranging for the private development of federally-owned oil fields in return for a bribe of $100,000. However, Daugherty’s failure to aggressively prosecute those involved and fur- ther allegations that he obstructed justice by trying to block a cong ressional inve stigation resulted in a loss of confidence in the attorney general. An investigation led by Democratic Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana resulted in Daugherty’s resignation in March 1924. In 1927 Daugherty was tried twice on charges of engaging in GRAFT and fraud while serving as attorney general. Both cases ended in a HUNG JURY. Daugherty spent the rest of his life practicing law in Ohio and attempting to rehabilitate both his own reputation and that of Harding. In 1932 he coauthored a book with Thomas Dixon called The Inside Story of the Harding Tragedy. Daugherty died of a heart attack in Columbus, Ohio, on October 12, 1941, at the age of 81. FURTHER READINGS Daugherty, Harry M., and Thomas Dixon. 1932. The Inside Story of the Harding Tragedy. New York: Churchill. Justice Department. 1985. Attorneys General of the United States, 1789–1985. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. Available online at http://www.usdoj. gov/ag/attygeneraldate.html; website home page: http:// www.usdoj.gov (accessed July 8, 2009). Mee, Charles L., Jr. 1981. The Ohio Gang: The World of Warren G. Harding. New York: M. Evans. CROSS REFERENCE Teapot Dome Scandal. Harry M. Daugherty. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3 RD E DITION DAUGHERTY, HARRY MICAJAH 363 DAVIS-BACON ACT The Davis-Bacon Act (40 U.S.C.A. §§ 276a to 276a-5) is federal law that governs the MINIMUM WAGE rate to be paid to laborers and mechanics employed on federal public works projects. It was enacted on March 3, 1931, and has been amended. Its purpose is to preserve local wage standards and promote local employment by preventing contractors who bid on public contracts from basing their bids on the use of cheap labor recruited from foreign sources. When controversies arise under the Davis- Bacon Act, they are first submitted to the federal agency that is in charge of the project. Thereafter, if the dispute is not satisfactorily resolved, the matter is submitted to the secretary of labor. The Wage Appeals Board of the LABOR DEPARTMENT acts on behalf of the secretary in reviewing questions of law and fact made in wage determinations issued under the act and its related prevailing wage statutes. The board has discretion in selecting the controversies that it will review. Following these administrative procedures, a dissatisfied party may seek relief in the federal courts. The courts, however, will only review whether there has been compliance with the constitutional, statutory, and procedural requirements of the practices and procedures of the agencies involved in the dispute. CROSS REFERENCE Labor Law. v DAVIS, ANGELA YVONNE Angela Yvonne Davis, political activist, author, professor, and Communist party member, was an international symbol of the black liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on January 26, 1944, the eldest of four children. Her family was relatively well off among the blacks in the city. Her father and mother were teachers in the Birmingham school system, and her father later purchased and operated a service station. When Davis was four years old, the family moved out of the Birmingham projects and bought a large wooden house in a nearby neighborhood. Other black families soon fol- lowed. Incensed white neighbors drew a divid- ing line between the white and black sections and began trying to drive the black families out by bombing their homes. The area soon was nicknamed Dynamite Hill. Davis’s mother had in college been involved in antiracism move- ments that had brought her into contact with sympathetic whites. She and Davis’s father tried to teach their daughter that this hostility between blacks and whites was not preordained. All of Birmingham was segregated during Davis’s childhood. She attended blacks-only schools and theaters and was relegated to the back of city buses and the back doors of shops, which rankled her. On one occasion, as teen- agers, Davis and her sister Fania entered a Birmingham shoe store and pretended to be non-English-speaking French visitors. After re- ceiving deferential treatment by the salesmen and other customers, Davis announced in English that black people only had to pretend to be from another country to be treated like dignitaries. Davis later wrote that although the black schools she attended were much poorer than the white schools in Birmingham, her studies of black historical and contemporary figures such as FREDERICK DOUGLASS, SOJOURNER TRUTH, and Harriet Tubman helped her develop a strong positive identification with black history. The CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT was beginning to touch Birmingham at the time Davis entered high school. Her parents were members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP). In her junior year of high school, Davis decided to leave what she considered to be the provincialism of Birmingham. She applied for an early entrance program at Fisk University, in Nashville, Tennessee, and an experimental pro- gram developed by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) through which black students from the South could attend integrated high schools in the North. Although Davis was admitted to Fisk—which she viewed as a step- ping-stone to medical school, where she could pursue a childhood dream of becoming a pediatrician—she chose the AFSC program. At age 15 she boarded a train for New York City. There she lived with a white family headed by an Episcopalian minister who had been forced from his church after speaking out against Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s anti- Communist witch-hunts. Davis attended Elisa- beth Irwin High School, located on the edge of Greenwich Village. The school originally had been a public school experiment in progressive education; when funding was cut off, the WE HAVE ACCUMULATED A WEALTH OF HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE WHICH CONFIRMS OUR BELIEF THAT THE SCALES OF JUSTICE ARE OUT OF BALANCE . —ANGELA DAVIS GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 364 DAVIS-BACON ACT teachers turned it into a private school. Here, Davis learned about SOCIALISM and avidly studied the Communist Manifesto. She also joined a Marxist-Leninist youth organization called Ad- vance, which had ties to the Communist Party. In September 1961 Davis entered Brandeis University, in Waltham, Massachusetts, on a full scholarship. One of only three black first-year students, she felt alienated and alone. The following summer, eager to meet revolutionary young people from other countries, Davis at- tended a gathering of communist youth from around the world in Helsinki, Finland. Here she was particularly struck by the cultural presenta- tions put on by the Cuban delegation. She also found that the U.S. CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY had stationed agents and informers throughout the festival. Upon her return to the United States, Davis was met by an investigator from the FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI), who questioned her about her participation in a communist event. Meeting people from around the world convinced Davis of the importance of tearing down cultural barriers such as language, and she decided to major in French at Brandeis. She was accepted in the Hamilton College Junior Year in France Program, and studied contemporary French literature at the Sorbonne, in Paris. Upon her return to Brandeis, Davis, who had always had an interest in philosophy, studied with the German philosopher Herbert Marcuse. The following year, she received a scholarship to study philosophy in Frankfurt, Germany, where she focused on the works of the Germans IMMANUEL KANT, Georg Hegel, and KARL MARX. During the two years Davis spent in Germany, the black liberation and black power movements were emerging in the United States. The BLACK PANTHER PARTY for SELF-DEFENSE had been formed in Oakland to protect the black community from police brutality. In the summer of 1967 Davis decided to return home to join these movements. Angela Yvonne Davis 1944– ▼▼ ▼▼ 1950 2000 1975 ◆ ◆ ◆◆ ◆ ◆ ◆◆◆ ◆◆ ◆ ◆❖ 1944 Born, Birmingham, Ala. 1961 Entered Brandeis University 1969 Hired as assistant professor of philosophy at UCLA 1970 Joined movement to free the Soledad brothers; arrested for kidnapping, conspiracy, and murder in Marin County Courthouse shooting case 1979 Won Lenin Peace Prize from Soviet Union 1974 Angela Davis: An Autobiography published 1984 Ran for vice president on Communist ticket 1983 Women, Race, and Class published 1980 Ran for vice president on Communist ticket 1991 Began teaching graduate program at UC–Santa Cruz 1989 Women, Culture, and Politics published 1994 Appointed to University of California Presidential Chair in African American and Feminist Studies 2003 Are Prisons Obsolete? published 1997 Helped found Critical Resistance organization to oppose the “Prison- Industrial Complex” 1961–73 Vietnam War 1950–53 Korean War ◆ 1972 Acquitted of Marin County charges; resumed teaching at San Francisco State Angela Davis. ALBERTO CRISTOFARI/A3/CONTRASTO/REDUX GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3 RD E DITION DAVIS, ANGELA YVONNE 365 Back in Los Angeles Davis worked with various academic and community organizations to build a coalition to address issues of concern to the African American community. Among these groups was the Black Panther Political Party (unrelated to HUEY NEWTON and Bobby Seale’s Black Panther Party for Self-Defense). During this period Davis was heavily criticized by black male activists for doing what they considered to be men’s work. Women should not assume leadership roles, they claimed, but should educate children and should support men so that they could direct the struggle for black liberation. Davis was to encounter this attitude in many of her political activities. By 1968 Davis had decided to join a collective organization in order to achieve her goal of organizing people for political action. She first considered joining the Communist Party. But because she related more to Mar xist groups, she decided instead to join the Black Panther Political Party, which later became the Los Angeles branch of the STUDENT NONVIOLENT COORDINATING COMMITTEE (SNCC). SNCC was soon embroiled in internal disputes. After her longtime friend Franklin Kenard was expelled from his leadership position in the group because of his Communist Party membership, Davis resigned from the organization. In July 1968 she joined the Che-Lumumba Club, the black cell of the Communist Party in Los Angeles. In 1969 Davis was hired as an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles. In July 1969 Davis joined a delegation of Communist Party members who had been invited to spend a month in Cuba. There she worked in coffee and sugarcane fields, and visited schools, hospitals, and historical sites. Davis remarked that everywhere she went in Cuba, she was immensely impressed with the gains that had been made against racism. She saw blacks in leadership positions throughout the country, and she concluded that only under a socialist system such as that established by Cuban leader Fidel Castro could the fight against racism have been so successful. When she returned to the United States, she discovered that several newspaper articles had been published detailing her membership in the Communist Party and accusing her of activities such as gunrunning for the Black Panther party. Governor RONALD REAGAN, of California, invoked a regulation in the handb ook of the regents of the University of California that prohibited the hiring of communists. Davis responded by affirming her membership in the Communist Party, and she began to receive hate mail and threatening phone calls. After she obtained an injunction prohibiting the regents from firing her, the threats multiplied. Soon she was receiving so many bomb threats that the campus police stopped checking her car for explosives, fo rcing her to learn the proce- dure for doing so herself. By the end of the year, the courts had ruled that the regulation prohibiting the hiring of communists was unconstitutional. However, in June 1970 the regents announced that Davis would not be rehired the following year, on the grounds that her political speeches outside the classroom were unbefitting a university professor. During this time Davis became involved with the movement to free three black inmates of Soledad Prison in California: George Jackson, John Clutchette, and Fleeta Drumgo. The men, known as the Soledad Brothers, had been indicted for the MURDER of a prison guard. The guard had been pushed over a prison railing when he inadvertently stumbled into a rebellion among black prisoners caused by the killing of three black prisoners by another prison guard. Although Jackson, Clutchette, and Drumgo claimed there was no evidence that they had killed the guard, they were charged with his murder. Davis began corresponding with Jackson and soon developed a personal relationship with him. She attended all the court hearings relating to the Soledad Brothers’ indictment, along with many other supporters, including Jackson’s younger brother, Jonathon Jackson, who was committed to freeing his brother and the other inmates. On August 7, 1970, using guns regis- tered to Davis, Jonathon attempted to free his brother in a shoot-out at the Marin County Courthouse. Four people were killed, including Jonathon and superior court judge Harold Haley. Davis was charged with kidnapping, con- spiracy, and murder, which was punishable in California by death. She fled, traveling in disguise from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Miami, and finally back to New York. In October 1970 she was arrested by the FBI, which had placed her on its most wanted list. In December, after two months in jail, Davis was extradited to California, where she spent the next 14 mont hs in jail. She later said that this period was pivotal to her understanding of GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 366 DAVIS, ANGELA YVONNE the black political struggle in the United States. Having worked to organize people in commu- nities and on campuses against political repres- sion, Davis now found herself a victim of that repression. In August 1971, while incarcerated in the Marin County Jail, she was devastated to learn that George Jackson had been killed by a guard in San Quentin Prison, allegedly while trying to escape. In February 1972 Davis was released on bail following the California Supreme Court’s deci- sion to abolish the death penalty (People v. Anderson, 6 Cal. 3d 628, 100 Cal. Rptr. 152, 493 P.2d 880). Previously, bail had not been available to persons accused of crimes punish- able by death. Her trial began a few days later, and lasted until early June 1972, when a jury acquitted her of all charges. After her acquittal, Davis resumed her teach- ing career, at San Francisco State University. She continued her affiliation with the Communist Party, receiving the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union in 1979 and running for vice PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES on the Communist Party ticket in 1980 and 1984. Davis is also a founder and cochair of the National Alliance against Racist and Political Repression, and is on the national board of the National Political Congress of Black Women and on the board of the Atlanta-based National Black Women’s Health Project. She has authored several books, including Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974), Women, Race, and Class (1983), Women, Culture, and Politics (1989), and Blues Legacies and Black Feminism (1998). In 1980 she married Hilton Braithwaite, a photographer and faculty colleague at San Francisco State. The marriage ended in divorce several years later. In 1991 Davis began teaching an interdisci- plinary graduate program titled the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 1994 she found herself again surrounded by controversy when she was awarded a prestigious University of California Presidential Chair by university president Jack Peltason. The appointment provides $75,000 over several years to develop new ethnic studies courses. Som e state lawmakers were outraged over the award and unsuccessfully demanded that Peltason rescind the appointment. Davis held the position until 1997. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Davis was still speaking out against and writing about the plight of persons she considered to be political prisoners, such as Indian activist Leonard Pelletier and ex-Black Panther Mumia Abu- Jamal, both convicted of killing law enforce- ment officers. She has continued to call for the decriminalization of prostitution on the basis that it would greatly reduce the number of women in prison. And she has lectured on what she calls the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC), positing that imprisonment has become the most common answe r to societal problems and that corporations are profiting from prison labor thereby weakening the chances of prison reform. In 1997 Davis helped found Critical Resistance, an organization that seeks to build an international movement dedicated to dis- mantling the PIC. Since the late 1970s Davis has lectured throughout the United States and in countries in Africa, Europe, and Asia. She also remains a prolific author, producing numerous articles and essays. In addition to writing and traveling for speaking engagements, Davis continues her work as tenured professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and her work with The National Alliance against Racist and Politi- cal Repression. FURTHER READINGS Davis, Angela. 1974. Angela Davis: An Autobiography. New York: International Publishers. James, Joy, ed. 1998. The Angela Y. Davis Reader. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. “The Two Nations of Black America: Interview with Angela Davis.” 1998. PBS: Frontline. Available online at <www. pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/race/interviews/ davis.html> (accessed August 17, 2009). CROSS REFERENCES Carmichael, Stokely; Cleaver, LeRoy Eldridge; Communism. v DAVIS, DAVID David Davis served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1862 to 1877. An Illinois attorney and judge, Davis acted as Abraham Lincoln’s campaign manager in the 1860 election, working tirelessly to win the REPUBLICAN PARTY nomination and the general election for Lincoln. Davis was born in Sassafras Neck, Maryland, on Mar ch 9, 1815. He attended Kenyon College at the age of 13. Following graduation he read the law in a Massachusetts law firm, before attending New Haven Law School for less than a year. In 1835 he moved to Illinois and was GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION DAVIS, DAVID 367 . Haywood defense. GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 35 8 DARROW, CLARENCE SEWARD Renowned labor leader SAMUEL GOMPERS, then president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), visited. 19, 2009). GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 36 0 DARROW, CLARENCE SEWARD ———. 19 93. The People v. Clarence Darrow. New York: Crown. Darrow, Clarence. 1996. The Story of My Life OF HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE WHICH CONFIRMS OUR BELIEF THAT THE SCALES OF JUSTICE ARE OUT OF BALANCE . —ANGELA DAVIS GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 36 4 DAVIS-BACON ACT teachers turned it into a private