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The Scopes Monkey Trial is considered to be one of the biggest trials in the history of the United States. The trial took place in the 1920 s, in a small town of Tennessee called Dayton. The trial was of a twenty four year old science teacher and a football coach named John T. Scopes. He was accused of opposing the Butler Act, which forbade the teaching of evolution in public schools and universities (Encarta).
The trial was famous worldwide as it divided the United States in the opinion of Darwinism. The trial was not only about a man who was accused of breaking a Tennessee law, it was a fight between modernists and traditionalists who were struggling to prove their point about evolution. Even though the trial was not so successful in changing the Butler Bill, it made many people believe that this is a issue that would be dealt with for a long time. During the Jazz Age in the 1920 s there was a lot of social change taking place in the United States. Many people, especially the northerners and people from cities were changing their attitude from a formal one to a different, more informal type of attitude. There were many things that were new and people liked it, for example jazz music and the developments in science.
These people believed in Darwinism, a theory from Charles Darwin saying that man has evolved from an ape. The modernist were the people who supported Darwin's theory, they opposed the restrictions against the teaching of evolution and tried to get rid of restrictions. Most of the people who opposed the theory of Darwinism came from the rural south and had conservative thoughts and feared that their country was turning into an agnostic nation rather than a protestant nation. (Inherit/ 1925) These people were known as the traditionalists. These conservatives wanted the things as they were and tried very hard to stop the teaching of Darwinism. They passed laws and acts in most of the southern state that forbade the teaching of Darwinism in public schools and colleges. One of these laws was known as the Butler Bill.
In Dayton, Tennessee 1925, John Scopes met a man named George Rappelyea, a 31 -year-old local company manager from New York, who was also a modernist who disliked the Butler Bill met him at a drugstore in Dayton (Inherit/ 1925). Rappelyea asked Scopes if he would challenge the anti evolution law called the Butler Bill. Rappelyea told Scopes that it was impossible to teach biology without the study of evolution. Scopes agreed and told Rappelyea that he assigned his class reading about evolution already. (Inherit/ 1925). Rappelyea told Scopes that he will have to face a trail and this trial will be a controversial one and might help make the small town of Dayton famous.
Earlier Rappelyea spotted a press release in a Tennessee newspaper offering legal support to any teacher who would challenge the law. Scopes impressed by Rappelyea's point of view agreed to take part in the trial. Scopes got two of his friends Herbert and Sue Hicks, who were both local attorneys, to fight for the prosecution. Then William Jennings Bryan, a famous politician who ran for presidential election and who is known for his strong religious beliefs and his Cross of Gold Speech that he gave during the 1896 presidential election, joined the prosecution. When Bryan joined the prosecution, many people started to go on his side. Soon after that A.
T. Stewart, Ben B. McKenzie and William Jennings Bryan Jr. also joined the prosecution, which was now a strong one. (Borndigital) The defense team was also an intimidating one, it was joined by many famous attorneys and politicians. They had John Neal, a law school dean from Knoxville Tennessee, Clarence Darrow, a seventy-year-old agnostic who was also one of the most famous criminal lawyers of his time, Arthur Garfield Hays, a free speech advocate, and Dudley Field Malone, a divorce attorney, to defend Scopes. Now the main competition was between Bryan and Darrow. (Borndigital) On the first day of the trial, the small town of Dayton was overloaded with people from all around the country, who came to experience one of the most controversial and biggest trials in history.
There was an estimated one thousand people jammed into the courthouse and there were sideshows with monkeys going on outside of the courthouse and a crowd of people overloading the streets. The town was filled up with politicians, lawyers, preachers, university scholars, reporters and even circus performers. There was small town fair with people selling food, souvenirs and religious books (Inherit/ 1925). This trial was also the first ever trial to be broadcasted over the radio. This enabled the whole nation to follow the famous trial (Cline).
The case quickly got volatile, as many people saw the case as a fight between good and evil. The case also represented the nation experiencing a conflict between religion and science and the rural south versus the urban north. Out of the crowd there were two main people who were trying to solve the case. Both William Bryan and Clarence Darrow had their own plans to win the case. Williams job was to prove that Scopes had broken the law and had to be punished to be teaching the imprudent theory of evolution even though he was a Christian. Clarence Darrow's defensive plan was to present in front of the court scientists and experts to try to prove the theory of evolution and its importance in biology (Borndigital).
However the prosecution was not going to allow Darrow to use the courtroom to perform and spread the teachings of evolution. Judge Raulston, who began the trial by reading the first twenty-seven verses of the Genesis, also did not want to see such evidence until he heard about it. A zoologist was then brought in and he explained the development of man. This angered the people in court, especially the prosecution. The next day the judge reminded the court that this trial was not about evolution and the Bible, but it was about a man who broke a Tennessee law. Darrow opposed this and was charged with contempt of court.
The next few days, the heat got unbearable and Judge Raulston moved the case to the courtyard where over five thousand people experienced the trial (Borndigital). Outside the courtyard Darrow set a trap for Bryan and asked him some very smart questions. Some of which were: Q. "You have given considerable study to the Bible, haven't you, Mr. Bryan?" A. "Yes, sir; I have tried to... But, of course, I have studied it more as I have become older than when I was a boy. " Q "Do you claim then that everything in the Bible should be literally interpreted?" A "I believe everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there... " After this Bryan had to give some difficult answers: Q: "Do you think the earth was made in six days?" A: "Not six days of 24 hours... My impression is they were periods... " Q: "Now, if you call those periods, they may have been a very long time?" A: "They might have been. " Q: "The creation might have been going on for a very long time?" A: "It might have continued for millions of years... " (Inherit/ 1925) Darrow had now successfully trapped Bryan.
The press got to know this as this being a defeat for Bryan. By asking these questions Darrow proved that even Bryan who was a religious man had some feeling that not everything in the Bible is true. After the exposure, some people in the crowd started to laugh at Bryan and supported Darrow. Darrow asked the jury to make the verdict so the case could go to the Supreme Court.
After eight minutes the Jury came out and they found Scopes guilty of breaking the law (Inherit/ 1925). The judge also ordered a fine of $ 100 (Cline). Scopes told the court his last words, which said, Your Honor, I feel that I have been convicted of violating an unjust statute. I will continue in the future... to oppose this law in any way I can.
Any other action would be in violation of my idea of academic freedom (Borndigital). Some few days later Bryan died of diabetes and a year the Supreme Court reversed the decision made by the Tennessee court. The supreme court said that there is prohibition of the teaching of any theory of evolution only which denies the Divine creation of man without regard to details of religious belief, of differing interpretations of the story as taught in the Bible (Linder). This sustains the act, but the way is left open for the teaching of subjects that are important in some sciences.
The Butler Act was however retained till 1967. (Encarta). However the ban from teaching evolution was lifted long time ago some people still today, dont believe that man has evolved from a monkey. Some people in the southern part of America still oppose the teaching of evolution in schools and universities and want to ban the teaching. For example in 1999 a Kansas University board voted to remove evolution from their lists of subjects.
In 2002 tension was in Ohio who was considering changes in its science curriculum (Linder 2). They believe that this is opposing the words of God and must be stopped. These people are Christians who seriously believe in the teaching of the Bible (in this case Genesis). The debate has always been going on and might be going forever because no one knows the reality and both sides have strong reasons that might be true. Scholars believe that the conflicts between science and religion will go on and will take a long time to end (Linder 2).
The Scopes Monkey Trial was not only a trial of a man who had been accused of breaking a particular Tennessee law; it was a much bigger issue. We saw in the trial that Darrow and Bryan were not talking much about whether Scopes was guilty or not (maybe because everyone already knew the outcome) they were fighting out the issues that were being talked about in the society of the United States at that time. They were setting a stage for modernists and traditionalists to fight out the long awaited battle by which the final decision about evolution would arrive. However that final decision has still not arrived till today.
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