When the state of Tennessee passed a law making it a crime to teach Darwin's theory of evolution in public schools, Roger Baldwin saw it as an opportunity and became executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, a fledgling organization devoted to individual rights.
Nestled in the Tennessee River valley, Dayton was only a village of 200 in 1880. By the turn of the century the town was fueled by both industry and agriculture as the Southern Railway line came through, bringing the coal and iron jobs.
It began over cokes and phosphates in a drugstore in Dayton, Tennessee. A little scheme to boost the local economy exploded into the trial of the century.
In the Leopold and Loeb trial of 1924, attorney Clarence Darrow achieved what many thought impossible. He saved the lives of two cold-blooded child-killers with the power of a speech.
