Scopes trial

The Scopes trial is formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes. It is also referred to as the Scopes monkey trial.

It was a famous American legal case in 1925. A substitute high school teacher, John Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act. This Act made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school.^[1] The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it was held.

Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution but he purposely incriminated himself so that the case could have a defendant.

Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, but the verdict was overturned on a technicality. The trial served its purpose of drawing intense national publicity. National reporters came to Dayton to cover the big-name lawyers who had agreed to represent each side. William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate, argued for the prosecution, while Clarence Darrow, the famed defense attorney, spoke for Scopes.

The trial publicized the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy. This set "Modernists", who said evolution was not inconsistent with religion,^[2] against Fundamentalists, who said the word of God as revealed in the Bible took priority over all human knowledge. The case was thus seen as both a theological contest and a trial on whether modern evolutionary biology should be taught in schools.

The Tennessee law was not repealed until 1967.^[3]

Scopes Trial Media

Photograph of John Scopes taken one month before the Tennessee v. John T. Scopes Trial. From the Smithsonian Institution Archives. Rotated, cropped, and cleaned by Kaldari.
Clarence Darrow in 1925, during the trial
The trial was front-page news all over the country, including this newspaper in Washington DC. Darrow was cited for contempt (at the time) and details on the many scientists that weren't allowed to testify.
Photograph of H. L. Mencken
William Jennings Bryan in 1925
Darrow (left) and Bryan (right) during the trial
The Rhea County Courthouse is a National Historic Landmark.
Cartoonist Rollin Kirby depicts fundamentalist education in Tennessee taken to an extreme
Spencer Tracy (left) as Darrow surrogate Henry Drummond, and Fredric March (right) as Bryan surrogate Matthew Harrison Brady in the trailer for the film Inherit the Wind; Harry Morgan (in the background) plays the judge.

References

↑ "Full text of the Butler Act and the bill that repealed it". Archived from the original on 2009-05-20. Retrieved 2014-06-09.
↑ Cotkin, George (2004) [1992]. Reluctant modernism: American thought and culture, 1880–1900. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 7–14. ISBN 978-0-7425-3746-0. Retrieved October 5, 2013.
↑ Futuyma, Douglas J. 1983. Science on trial: the case for evolution. New York: Pantheon, p6. ISBN 0-394-70679-X

[1] "Full text of the Butler Act and the bill that repealed it". Archived from the original on 2009-05-20. Retrieved 2014-06-09.

[2] Cotkin, George (2004) [1992]. Reluctant modernism: American thought and culture, 1880–1900. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 7–14. ISBN 978-0-7425-3746-0. Retrieved October 5, 2013.

[3] Futuyma, Douglas J. 1983. Science on trial: the case for evolution. New York: Pantheon, p6. ISBN 0-394-70679-X

[1]

[2]

[3]