"You have seen people in this courtroom, you have seen them at this trial, you have met them in your life, have every reason to respect them, to love them, to appreciate them, except that maybe one of their ancestors going back and back and back to where perhaps they had ten thousand ancestors, and one of them was black or partly black, and he has to be a hewer of wood and drawer of water and all of his generation, to the end of time to be cursed that way by those who think their blood is pure.

Of course, the marvel of it is that there is not any such thing as pure blood.

How far can you go back in yours, how far can I go back in mine? I knew who my father was and who my mother was, and I know who all four of my grandparents were, but when I get back of that I am lost in obscurity and night. I know they came from New England. I hate to admit it, but they did,–pure Nordic.

MR. TOMS: New England Nordic?

MR. DARROW: New England Nordic. Isn’t it awful? I know it. I had to bear it and get along with it the best I could for all these years. For all I know they may have been related to Jonathan Edwards. From there they go back to England, but what of it? Gentlemen, I don’t know where they came from back of that or that far, and I know that back of me and back of you is an infinite ancestry stretching away back at least five hundred thousand years, and we are made up of everything on the face of the earth, of all kinds and colors and degrees of civilization, and out of that come we.

Who are we, any of us, to be boastful above our fellows?"

Clarence Darrow, Esq., in the successful closing argument in defense of Ossian Sweet