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Professor John T. Scopes
On this Day: Tennessee Educator Scopes Indicted for Teaching Evolution
May 25, 2008 12:10 AM
by
findingDulcinea Staff
On May 25, 1925, the “Scopes Monkey Trial” began when John Scopes was indicted under a state law barring the teaching of Darwin’s theory of evolution.
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The case of the State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes pitted creationists against supporters of evolution, sparring over a Tennessee antievolution law making it illegal “to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”
The Scopes trial created a media circus, and the affair was in part a publicity stunt orchestrated by the American Civil Liberties Union to test the legality of state-imposed religious limits on teaching, says American Heritage Magazine.
In March 1925, the ACLU advertised and found a willing plaintiff in Scopes, a high school biology teacher from Dayton, Tenn. Supporters of evolution paid his legal costs.
The trial attracted high-level supporters from both sides of the debate, and pitted two top legal minds against each other: creationist William Jennings Bryan—a three-time Democratic candidate for president—and prominent ACLU lawyer Clarence Darrow.
In the end, Scopes was fined $100, a fee that was later voided. The conviction and the nominal penalty allowed both sides to claim victory.
The law, largely ignored and unenforced since the Scopes trial, was repealed in 1967.
The debate over the teaching of evolution still rages today. “As creationism keeps popping up in new guises, such as Creation Science and Intelligent Design, the Scopes trial gets dusted off for each new generation,” writes Frederic D. Schwarz of American Heritage magazine.
The Scopes trial created a media circus, and the affair was in part a publicity stunt orchestrated by the American Civil Liberties Union to test the legality of state-imposed religious limits on teaching, says American Heritage Magazine.
In March 1925, the ACLU advertised and found a willing plaintiff in Scopes, a high school biology teacher from Dayton, Tenn. Supporters of evolution paid his legal costs.
The trial attracted high-level supporters from both sides of the debate, and pitted two top legal minds against each other: creationist William Jennings Bryan—a three-time Democratic candidate for president—and prominent ACLU lawyer Clarence Darrow.
In the end, Scopes was fined $100, a fee that was later voided. The conviction and the nominal penalty allowed both sides to claim victory.
The law, largely ignored and unenforced since the Scopes trial, was repealed in 1967.
The debate over the teaching of evolution still rages today. “As creationism keeps popping up in new guises, such as Creation Science and Intelligent Design, the Scopes trial gets dusted off for each new generation,” writes Frederic D. Schwarz of American Heritage magazine.
Headline Link: ‘The Great Trial’
In an article published July 20, 1925, Time magazine described the scene at the famous trial. “A jury was sworn—ten farmers, a shipping clerk and a farmer-teacher, none of whom had ever read a book on Evolution or admitted a prejudice for or against it; all of whom, with the exception of one illiterate, had read the Bible."
Source: Time
Background: Songs rallied religious supporters; ‘Monkey Trial’ FAQs
The Scopes trial inspired many to defend their religious beliefs with song. PBS has links to tunes from the Bryan College archives in Dayton, Tennessee.
Source: PBS
American Heritage magazine answers frequently asked questions and debunks common myths about the Scopes trial, including the fact that, contrary to popular belief, Scopes was never in any danger of imprisonment, as the antievolution law never mentioned jail time.
Source: American Heritage
Opinion & Analysis: Antiterrorism measures put fundamentalism on trial; ‘anti-evolution’ crusaders
Amy Waldman of the Atlantic in 2006 compared terrorism trials to the Scopes affair for putting fundamentalism on trial. “In their exploration of Islam, the recent terrorism trials have had a similar, if perhaps less circuslike, feel.”
Source: The Atlantic
The Scopes trial arose from “a so-called ‘anti-evolution crusade’ which began just after World War I, and by the 1920s, both sides had carried this theological dispute into the classroom,” according to Michael Cromartie, speaking at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. “Neither side wanted the other’s view taught as scientific fact in public school courses.” Today, the U.S. Supreme Court “has ruled that creationism shouldn’t be allowed in the classroom, but it has never said that its mandate is to teach evolution,” notes Jane Little of the BBC. “Because certainly last year in Dayton, I was interviewing 18-year-olds who had been through the public school system and knew nothing about evolution or Darwin.”
Source: Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life
Related Topics: ‘Florida legislature debates teaching evolution alternatives,’ ‘Inherit the Wind’ movie portrays Scopes trial
Proposed legislation in Florida would require public schools to teach alternative theories of evolution. Critics feel the law is a veiled attempt to teach religion.
Source: findingDulcinea
IMDB calls the 1960 film “Inherit the Wind” a “thinly disguised rendition” of the trial, as some of its debates were taken directly from the trial’s actual transcripts. The movie, starring Spencer Tracy and Gene Kelly, was based on a 1955 play of the same name and was nominated for four Oscars.
Source: Internet Movie Database
Reference: Famous trials, religion and education in America
This comprehensive site includes primary documents such as photos, cartoons, biographies, trial excerpts, a chronology and film footage as part of the Famous Trials in American History series provided by the University of Missouri-Kansas.
Source: University of Missouri-Kansas
Selected unpublished photographs from the trial, uncovered by a historian and donated to the Smithsonian Institution Archives in 1971, are available online.
Source: Smithsonian Institution Archives
The Los Angeles Times reviews the book “Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion,” by Edward J. Lawson. “Edward Larson’s training both in legal history and in the history of science serves him well in Summer for the Gods, which was recently awarded the Pulitzer Prize for history,” writes reviewer Edward McGlynn Gaffney, Jr.
Source: Access Research Network
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