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The cause defended at Dayton is a continuing one that has existed throughout man's brief history and will con- tinue as long as man is here. It is the cause of freedom, for which each man must do what he can. I did little more than sit, proxylike, in freedom's chair that hot, unforgettable summer - no great feat, despite the notoriety it has brought me. My role was a passive one that developed out of my willingness to test what I considered a bad law. I felt that others did more than I; if men like Clarence Darrow had not come to my aid and had not dramatized the case to a responsive world, freedom would have lost.
Darrow would have said I had no choice but to stand trial at Dayton and he would have started his proof at least with my parents, or as far back as he could go. I had been taught from childhood to stand up for what I thought was right and I did not think the state of Tennessee had any right to keep me from teaching the truth. So I was willing to test the law's constitutionality. If the result has served freedom, then I must give much of the credit to my own parents and to a tolerant environment that taught me early in life to revere truth and love and courage.
I was born, a child of this strange century, on August 3, 1900, in Paducah, Kentucky, an Ohio River town that was a symbol of the live-and-let-live philosophy that I was taught at home. Who knows what would have happened to me with a different background? I would not have been me; I would have been someone else. Chance and the in- gredients of environment have strongly shaped my life, and I am sure most other persons, if they looked deeply into themselves, would admit being molded by the same factors.