Scopes trial still echoes today

It’s been an inter­est­ing cen­tu­ry since the cul­mi­na­tion of the Scopes tri­al, more pop­u­lar­ly known as the “Monkey Trial.” Actually, it was 101 years ago that the tri­al took place in Dayton, Tennessee in the sum­mer of 1925. 

Briefly, the tri­al was the pros­e­cu­tion of John Scopes, a local high school teacher who had agreed to be a test case of the recent­ly passed Butler Law, which banned teach­ing evo­lu­tion in pub­lic schools. 

Local busi­ness­men thought a pub­lic tri­al would bring some noto­ri­ety to the town so they arranged for Clarence Darrow to serve as defense lawyer for Scopes while William Jennings Bryan would be the pros­e­cut­ing attorney. 

The businessmen’s vision paid off. Thousands came to the town, cre­at­ing a car­ni­val atmos­phere and the tri­al was broad­cast on radio, some­thing high­ly unusu­al for the peri­od. The tri­al quick­ly devolved into a debate over evo­lu­tion, with the fate of Scopes tak­ing a back­ground position. 

Scopes was found guilty. He did, after all, vio­late state law, but the ver­dict of a $100 fine was lat­er over­turned on a technicality. 

All the furor in Dayton must have spurred ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tion about evo­lu­tion since Mississippi passed a sim­i­lar law in 1926, fol­lowed by Arkansas in 1928. All these laws stayed on the books until 1967 for Tennessee and 1968 for Mississippi and Arkansas. 

In more recent years, efforts have con­tin­ued to require the teach­ing of alter­na­tive cre­ation the­o­ries in the pub­lic schools. Part of those efforts have cen­tered around renam­ing these reli­gion-based pro­pos­als under the title of “cre­ation­ism” and “intel­li­gent design.” 

In 2002, stick­ers were placed on biol­o­gy text­books in Georgia instruct­ing stu­dents that evo­lu­tion was a “the­o­ry only and not a fact.” 

In Kentucky, in 1999 “evo­lu­tion” in sci­ence cur­ricu­lum guide­lines was replaced with “change over time.” 

In 2001, Senator Rick Santorum (Republican of Pennsylvania) pro­posed an amend­ment to the edu­ca­tion fund­ing bill that pro­mot­ed the teach­ing of intel­li­gent design. 

Perhaps the most well-known attempt to insert anti-evo­lu­tion the­o­ries into the pub­lic class­rooms was thwart­ed in the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District in Pennsylvania in 2005. Judge John E. Jones issued a 130-page rul­ing that stat­ed that intel­li­gent design was a reli­gious the­o­ry with no sci­en­tif­ic basis. Since the school board mem­bers who defend­ed the pol­i­cy of teach­ing intel­li­gent design were all defeat­ed in elec­tions that year, the case was nev­er appealed. This was essen­tial­ly the death knell of intel­li­gent design, at least as a sub­ject for pub­lic high school classes. 

Today, evo­lu­tion is taught in every state’s pub­lic schools and no states require the teach­ing of cre­ation­ism — although it may be taught in civics, cur­rent affairs, phi­los­o­phy, and com­par­a­tive reli­gion classes. 

In a 2019 Gallup poll, 40% of American adults were inclined to the belief that “God cre­at­ed humans in their present form at one time with­in the last 10,000 years.” 

It would be inter­est­ing to see how that belief appears in oth­er coun­tries of the world. 

Dayton returned to its small-town sim­plic­i­ty not long after the tri­al; it sits a short dis­tance off I‑75 and one can vis­it the cour­t­house where the tri­al took place. Interestingly, a stat­ue of Bryan was erect­ed at the cour­t­house in 2005, but it was not until 2017 that a sim­i­lar stat­ue of Darrow was erect­ed near­by, its $150,000 cost paid by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. 

The movie Inherit the Wind (1960) is a drama­ti­za­tion of the tri­al, star­ring Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond (Darrow) and Frederick March as Matthew Harrison Brady (Bryan). Harry Morgan, whom many remem­ber as Colonel Potter of M*A*S*H, was the pre­sid­ing judge. Gene Kelly plays E.K. Hornbeck (H. L. Mencken, who cov­ered the trial). 

Some of the dia­logue in the movie is actu­al tes­ti­mo­ny from the tri­al, espe­cial­ly Darrow’s (Spencer Tracy’s) speech about “march­ing back­ward in time.” 

This was a most inter­est­ing peri­od of American his­to­ry and the tri­al was a fas­ci­nat­ing pin­point in that period. 

Excellent read­ing about the tri­al, with actu­al tran­scripts from parts of the tri­al, can be found in Monkey Business by Marvin Olasky and John Perry, Keeping the Faith by Brenda Wineapple, The Last Trials of Clarence Darrow by Donald McRae and Summer for the Gods by Edward J. Larson.