From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tennessee v. Scopes
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Court
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Criminal Court of Tennessee
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Full case name
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The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes
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Date decided
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July 21, 1925
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Citation(s)
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None
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Judge(s) sitting
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Case history
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Subsequent action(s)
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The Scopes
Trial, formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes
and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was a landmark
American legal case in 1925 in which high school science teacher, John Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which made it unlawful to teach evolution in any state-funded school.[1]
Scopes was
found guilty, but the verdict was overturned on a technicality and he went
free. The trial drew intense national publicity, as national reporters flocked
to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, to cover the big-name lawyers
representing each side. William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate for
the Democrats, argued for the prosecution, while Clarence Darrow, the famed defense attorney, spoke for
Scopes. The trial set modernists, who said evolution was consistent with religion,
against fundamentalists who said the word of God as revealed in
the Bible took priority over all human knowledge. The trial was thus both a theological contest and a trial on the veracity of modern
science regarding the creation-evolution controversy. The teaching of evolution expanded,
as fundamentalist efforts to use state laws to reverse the trend had failed in
the court of public opinion.[2]
Origins
State
Representative John W. Butler, head of the World's Christian Fundamentals
Association, lobbied state legislatures to pass anti-evolution laws, succeeding
in Tennessee when the Butler Act was passed.[3] In response, the American Civil Liberties Union financed a test case in which John Scopes, a Tennessee high school science
teacher, agreed to be tried for violating the Act. Scopes, who had substituted
for the regular biology teacher, was charged on May 5, 1925, with teaching
evolution from a chapter in a textbook that described the theory of evolution.
The two sides brought in the biggest names in the nation, William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution and Clarence Darrow for the defense, and the trial was
followed on radio transmissions throughout America.[4][5]
Dayton
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) offered to defend anyone
accused of teaching the theory of evolution in defiance of the Butler Act. On
April 5, 1925, George Rappleyea, who worked as a local manager for the Cumberland Coal
and Iron Company, happened to meet county superintendent of schools Walter
White and local attorney Sue K. Hicks at Robinson's Drug Store and convinced
them that the controversy of such a trial would give Dayton much needed
publicity. According to Robinson, Rappleyea said, "As it is, the law is
not enforced. If you win, it will be enforced. If I win, the law will be
repealed. We're game, aren't we?" The men then summoned 24-year-old John T. Scopes, a Dayton high school science and math
teacher. The group asked Scopes to plead guilty to teaching the theory of
evolution.[6][7]
Rappleyea
pointed out that, while the Butler Act prohibited the teaching of the theory of
evolution, the state required teachers to use a textbook that explicitly
described and endorsed the theory of evolution, and that teachers were,
therefore, effectively required to break the law.[8] Scopes mentioned that while he
couldn't remember whether he had actually taught evolution in class, he had,
however, gone through the evolution chart and chapter with the class. Scopes
added to the group: "If you can prove that I've taught evolution and that
I can qualify as a defendant, then I'll be willing to stand trial."[9]
Scopes became
an increasingly willing participant, even incriminating himself and urging
students to testify against him.[10] He was indicted on May 25, after three
students testified against him at the grand jury, at the behest of Scopes.[11] Judge John T. Raulston accelerated the
convening of the grand jury and "... all but instructed the grand jury to
indict Scopes, despite the meager evidence against him and the widely reported
stories questioning whether the willing defendant had ever taught evolution in
the classroom."[12] Scopes was charged with having taught
from the chapter on evolution to an April 24, 1925, high-school class in
violation of the Butler Act and nominally arrested, though he was never
actually detained. Paul Patterson, owner of The Baltimore Sun, put up $500 in bail for Scopes.[13][14]
Hoping to
attract major press coverage, George Rappleyea went so far as to write to the British novelist H. G. Wells asking him to join the defense team.
Wells replied that he had no legal training in Britain, least of all in
America, and declined the offer. However, John R. Neal, a law school professor from Knoxville, announced
that he would act as Scopes' attorney whether Scopes liked it or not, and he
became the nominal head of the defense team. Baptist pastor William Bell Riley, the founder and president of the World Christian Fundamentals
Association, was
instrumental in calling lawyer and three-time Democratic presidential nominee, former United States Secretary of State, and lifelong Presbyterian William Jennings Bryan to act as that organization's counsel.
Bryan had originally been invited by Sue Hicks to become an associate of the
prosecution and Bryan had readily accepted, despite the fact he had not tried a
case in thirty-six years. As Scopes pointed out to James Presley in the book Center
of the Storm, on which the two collaborated: "After [Bryan] was
accepted by the state as a special prosecutor in the case, there was never any
hope of containing the controversy within the bounds of
constitutionality."[15][16]
The trial was
covered by famous journalists from the South and around the world, including H. L. Mencken for The Baltimore Sun, which was also paying part of the
defense's expenses. It was Mencken who provided the trial with its most
colorful labels such as the "Monkey Trial" of "the infidel
Scopes." It was also the first United States trial to be broadcast on
national radio.[17]
The actual proceedings
The ACLU had
originally intended to oppose the Butler Act on the grounds that it violated the
teacher's individual rights and academic freedom, and was therefore
unconstitutional. Mainly because of Clarence Darrow, this strategy changed as
the trial progressed, and the earliest argument proposed by the defense once
the trial had begun was that there was actually no conflict between evolution
and the creation account in the Bible; later, this viewpoint would be called theistic evolution. In support of this claim, they brought in eight experts
on evolution. But other than Dr. Maynard Metcalf, a zoologist from Johns Hopkins University, the judge would not allow these
experts to testify in person. Instead, they were allowed to submit written
statements so that their evidence could be used at the appeal. In response to
this decision, Darrow made a sarcastic comment to Judge Raulston (as he often
did throughout the trial) on how he had been agreeable only on the
prosecution's suggestions, for which he apologized the next day, keeping
himself from being found in contempt of court.[18]
The presiding
judge, John T. Raulston, was accused of being biased towards the prosecution
and frequently clashed with Darrow. At the outset of the trial, Raulston quoted
Genesis and the Butler Act. He also warned the jury not to judge the merit of
the law (which would become the focus of the trial) but on the violation of the
act, which he called a 'high misdemeanor.' The jury foreman himself was
unconvinced of the merit of the Act but he acted, as did most of the jury, on
the instructions of the judge.[19]
By the later
stages of the trial, Clarence Darrow had largely abandoned the ACLU's original
strategy and attacked the literal interpretation of the Bible as well as
Bryan's limited knowledge of other religions and science.
Only when the
case went to appeal did the defense return to the original claim that the
prosecution was invalid because the law was essentially designed to benefit a
particular religious group, which would be unconstitutional.
Bryan chastised
evolution for teaching children that humans were but one of (precisely) 35,000
types of mammals and bemoaned the notion that human beings were descended
"Not even from American monkeys, but from old world monkeys".[20]
Malone
responded for the defense in a speech that was universally considered the
oratorical triumph of the trial.[21] Arousing fears of
"inquisitions," Malone argued that the Bible should be preserved in
the realm of theology and morality and not put into a course of science. In his
conclusion, Malone declared that Bryan's "duel to the death" against
evolution should not be made one-sided by a court ruling that took away the
chief witnesses for the defense. Malone promised that there would be no duel
because "there is never a duel with the truth." The courtroom went
wild when Malone finished, and Scopes declared Malone's speech to be the
dramatic highpoint of the entire trial and insisted that part of the reason
Bryan wanted to go on the stand was to regain some of his tarnished glory.[22]
On the sixth
day of the trial, the defense ran out of witnesses. The judge declared that all
of the defense testimony on the Bible was irrelevant and should not be
presented to the jury (which had been excluded during the defense). During the
court proceedings (7th day of the trial) the defense asked the judge to call
Bryan as a witness to question him on the Bible, as their own experts had been
rendered irrelevant; Darrow had planned the day before and called Bryan a
"Bible expert." This move surprised those present in the court, as
Bryan was a counsel for the prosecution and Bryan himself (according to a
journalist reporting the trial) never made a claim of being an expert; although
he did tout his knowledge of the Bible.[23] This testimony revolved around several
questions regarding biblical stories and Bryan's beliefs (as shown below), this
testimony culminated in Bryan declaring that Darrow was using the court to
"slur the Bible" while Darrow replied that Bryan's statements on the
Bible were "foolish."[20]
Examination of Bryan
On the seventh
day of the trial, Clarence Darrow took the unorthodox step of calling William
Jennings Bryan, counsel for the prosecution, to the stand as a witness in an
effort to demonstrate that belief in the historicity of the Bible and its many
accounts of miracles was unreasonable. Bryan accepted, on the understanding
that Darrow would in turn submit to questioning by Bryan. Although Hays would
claim in his autobiography that the cross-examination of Bryan was unplanned,
Darrow spent the night before in preparation. The scientists the defense had
brought to Dayton--and Charles Francis Potter, a modernist minister who had lost a
public debate on evolution with the fundamentalist preacher John Roach Straton[citation needed]--prepared topics and questions for
Darrow to address to Bryan on the witness stand.[24] Kirtley Mather, chairman of the geology department at
Harvard and also a devout Baptist, played
Bryan and answered questions as he believed Bryan would.[25][26] Raulston had adjourned court to the
stand on the courthouse lawn, ostensibly because he was "afraid of the
building" with so many spectators crammed into the courtroom, but probably
because of the stifling heat (p. 227; Scopes and Presley p. 164).
Adam and Eve
An area of
questioning involved the book of Genesis, including questions such as if Eve was actually created from Adam's rib, where did Cain get his wife, and how many people
lived in Ancient Egypt. Darrow used these examples to suggest
that the stories of the Bible could not be scientific and should not be used in
teaching science with Darrow telling Bryan, "You insult every man of
science and learning in the world because he does not believe in your fool
religion."[27] Bryan's declaration in response was,
"The reason I am answering is not for the benefit of the superior court.
It is to keep these gentlemen from saying I was afraid to meet them and let
them question me, and I want the Christian world to know that any atheist,
agnostic, unbeliever, can question me anytime as to my belief in God, and I
will answer him."[28]
Stewart
objected, demanding to know the legal purpose of Darrow's questioning. Bryan,
gauging the effect the session was having, snapped that its purpose was
"to cast ridicule on everybody who believes in the Bible". Darrow,
with equal vehemence, retorted, "We have the purpose of preventing bigots
and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United States." (p.
299)
A few more
questions followed in the charged open-air courtroom. Darrow asked where Cain
got his wife; Bryan answered that he would "leave the agnostics to hunt
for her" (pp. 302–03). When Darrow addressed the issue of the temptation of Eve by the serpent, Bryan insisted that the Bible be
quoted verbatim rather than allowing Darrow to paraphrase it in his own terms.
However, after another angry exchange, Judge Raulston banged his gavel,
adjourning the court.
End of the trial
The
confrontation between Bryan and Darrow lasted approximately two hours on the
afternoon of the seventh day of the trial. It is likely that it would have
continued the following morning but for Judge Raulston's announcement that he
considered the whole examination irrelevant to the case and his decision that
it should be "expunged" from the record. Thus Bryan was denied the
chance to cross-examine the defense lawyers in return, although after the trial
Bryan would distribute nine questions to the press to bring out Darrow's
"religious attitude." The questions and Darrow's short answers were
published in newspapers the day after the trial ended, with The New York
Times characterizing Darrow as answering Bryan's questions "with his
agnostic's creed, 'I don't know,' except where he could deny them with his
belief in natural, immutable law."[29]
After the
defense's final attempt to present evidence was denied, Darrow asked the judge
to bring in the jury only to have them come to a guilty verdict:
We claim that
the defendant is not guilty, but as the court has excluded any testimony,
except as to the one issue as to whether he taught that man descended from a
lower order of animals, and we cannot contradict that testimony, there is no
logical thing to come except that the jury find a verdict that we may carry to
the higher court, purely as a matter of proper procedure. We do not think it is
fair to the court or counsel on the other side to waste a lot of time when we
know this is the inevitable result and probably the best result for the case.
After they were
brought in, Darrow then addressed the jury, telling them that:
We came down
here to offer evidence in this case and the court has held under the law that
the evidence we had is not admissible, so all we can do is to take an exception
and carry it to a higher court to see whether the evidence is admissible or
not...we cannot even explain to you that we think you should return a verdict
of not guilty. We do not see how you could. We do not ask it.
Darrow closed
the case for the defense without a final summation. Under Tennessee law, when
the defense waived its right to make a closing speech, the prosecution was also
barred from summing up its case.
Scopes never
testified since there was never a factual issue as to whether he had taught
evolution. Scopes later admitted that, in reality, he was unsure of whether he
had taught evolution (another reason the defense did not want him to testify),
but the point was not contested at the trial (Scopes 1967: pp. 59–60).
After eight
days of trial, it took the jury only nine minutes to deliberate. Scopes was
found guilty on July 21 and ordered to pay a US$100 fine (approximately $1,325 in present day
terms when adjusted from 1925 for inflation).[30] Raulston imposed the fine before
Scopes was given an opportunity to say anything about why the court should not
impose punishment upon him and after Neal brought the error to the judge's
attention the defendant spoke for the first and only time in court:
Your honor, I
feel that I have been convicted of violating an unjust statute. I will continue
in the future, as I have in the past, to oppose this law in any way I can. Any
other action would be in violation of my ideal of academic freedom—that is, to
teach the truth as guaranteed in our constitution, of personal and religious
freedom. I think the fine is unjust. (World's Most Famous Court Trial,
p. 313.)
Appeal to Supreme Court of Tennessee
Scopes' lawyers
appealed, challenging the conviction on several grounds.
First, they
argued that the statute was overly vague because it prohibited the teaching of
"evolution," a very broad term. The court rejected that argument,
holding:
Evolution, like
prohibition, is a broad term. In recent bickering,
however, evolution has been understood to mean the theory which holds that man
has developed from some pre-existing lower type. This is the popular
significance of evolution, just as the popular significance of prohibition is
prohibition of the traffic in intoxicating liquors. It was in that sense that
evolution was used in this act. It is in this sense that the word will be used
in this opinion, unless the context otherwise indicates. It is only to the
theory of the evolution of man from a lower type that the act before us was
intended to apply, and much of the discussion we have heard is beside this
case.
Second, the
lawyers argued that the statute violated Scopes's constitutional right to free speech because it prohibited him from
teaching evolution. The court rejected this argument, holding that the state
was permitted to regulate his speech as an employee of the state:
He was an
employee of the state of Tennessee or of a municipal agency of the state. He
was under contract with the state to work in an institution of the state. He
had no right or privilege to serve the state except upon such terms as the
state prescribed. His liberty, his privilege, his immunity to teach and
proclaim the theory of evolution, elsewhere than in the service of the state,
was in no wise touched by this law.
Third, it was
argued that the terms of the Butler Act violated the Tennessee State Constitution, which provided that "It shall be
the duty of the General Assembly in all future periods of this
government, to cherish literature and science." The argument was that the
theory of the descent of man from a lower order of animals was now established
by the preponderance of scientific thought, and that the prohibition of the
teaching of such theory was a violation of the legislative duty to cherish
science.
The court
rejected this argument (Scopes v. State, 154 Tenn. 105, 1927), holding
that the determination of what laws cherished science was an issue for the
legislature, not the judiciary:
The courts
cannot sit in judgment on such acts of the Legislature or its agents and
determine whether or not the omission or addition of a particular course of
study tends "to cherish science."
Fourth, the
defense lawyers argued that the statute violated the provisions of the
Tennessee Constitution that prohibited the establishment of a state religion.
The Religious Preference provisions of the Tennessee Constitution (section 3 of
article 1) stated, "no preference shall ever be given, by law, to any
religious establishment or mode of worship."[31]
Writing for the
court, Chief Justice Grafton Green rejected this argument, holding that
the Tennessee Religious Preference clause was designed to prevent the
establishment of a state religion as had been the experience in England and Scotland at the writing
of the Constitution, and held:
We are not able
to see how the prohibition of teaching the theory that man has descended from a
lower order of animals gives preference to any religious establishment or mode
of worship. So far as we know, there is no religious establishment or organized
body that has in its creed or confession of faith any article denying or
affirming such a theory. So far as we know, the denial or affirmation of such a
theory does not enter into any recognized mode of worship. Since this cause has
been pending in this court, we have been favored, in addition to briefs of
counsel and various amici curiae, with a multitude of resolutions, addresses,
and communications from scientific bodies, religious factions, and individuals
giving us the benefit of their views upon the theory of evolution. Examination
of these contributions indicates that Protestants, Catholics, and Jews are
divided among themselves in their beliefs, and that there is no unanimity among
the members of any religious establishment as to this subject. Belief or
unbelief in the theory of evolution is no more a characteristic of any
religious establishment or mode of worship than is belief or unbelief in the
wisdom of the prohibition laws. It would appear that members of the same
churches quite generally disagree as to these things.
Further, the
court held that while the statute forbade the teaching of evolution (as
the court had defined it), it did not require the teaching of any other
doctrine, so that it did not benefit any one religious doctrine or sect over
the others.
Nevertheless,
having found the statute to be constitutional, the court set aside the
conviction on appeal because of a legal technicality: the jury should have decided the fine, not the judge,
since under the state constitution, Tennessee judges could not at that time set
fines above $50, and the Butler Act specified a minimum fine of $100.[5]
Justice Green
added a totally unexpected recommendation:
The court is
informed that the plaintiff in error is no longer in the service of the state.
We see nothing to be gained by prolonging the life of this bizarre case. On the
contrary, we think that the peace and dignity of the state, which all criminal
prosecutions are brought to redress, will be the better conserved by the entry
of a nolle prosequi herein.
Such a course is suggested to
the Attorney General. Attorney
General L.D. Smith immediately announced that he would not seek a retrial, while Scopes' lawyers offered angry
comments on the stunning decision.[32]
Aftermath of the trial
Image of science versus religion
The
trial revealed a growing chasm in American Christianity and two ways of finding
truth, one "biblical" and one "scientific." Liberals saw a
division between educated, tolerant Christians and narrow-minded, obscurantist
Christians. Author David Goetz[33] claimed that the majority of Christians
denounced evolution at the time.
Edwards
(2000) contradicts the conventional view that in the wake of the Scopes trial a
humiliated fundamentalism retreated into the political and cultural background,
a viewpoint evidenced in the movie Inherit the Wind and the majority of
contemporary historical accounts. Rather, the cause of fundamentalism's retreat
was the death of its leader, Bryan. Most fundamentalists saw the trial as a
victory and not a defeat, but Bryan's death soon after created a leadership
void that no other fundamentalist leader could fill. Bryan, unlike the other
leaders, brought name recognition, respectability, and the ability to forge a
broad-based coalition of fundamentalist and mainline religious groups to argue
for the anti-evolutionist position.[34]
Anti-evolution movement
The trial
escalated the political and legal conflict between strict creationists and
scientists to influence the extent to which evolution would be taught as
science in Arizona and California schools. Before the Dayton trial only the South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Kentucky legislatures had dealt with
anti-evolution laws or riders to educational appropriations bills.[citation needed]
After Scopes
was convicted, creationists throughout the United States sought similar
anti-evolution laws for their states.[35]
By 1927, there
were 13 states, both in the North and South, that considered some form of anti-evolution law. At
least 41 bills or resolutions were introduced into the state legislatures, with
some states facing the issue repeatedly. Nearly all these efforts were
rejected, but Mississippi and Arkansas did put anti-evolution laws on the books after the Scopes
trial that would outlive the Butler Act.[36][37]
In the
Southwest, anti-evolution crusaders included ministers R. S. Beal and Aubrey L.
Moore in Arizona and members of the Creation Research Society in California.
They sought to ban evolution as a topic for study in the schools or, failing
that, to relegate it to the status of unproven hypothesis perhaps taught
alongside the biblical version of creation. Educators, scientists, and other
distinguished laymen favored evolution. This struggle occurred later in the
Southwest than elsewhere and persisted through the Sputnik era after 1957 when
it collapsed, as the national mood inspired increased trust in science in
general and support for evolution in particular.[37][38]
The
opponents of evolution made a transition from the anti-evolution crusade of the
1920s to the creation science movement of the 1960s. Despite some similarities between these
two causes, the creation science movement represented a shift from overtly religious to covertly religious
objections to evolutionary theory—raising what it claimed to be scientific evidence in
support of a literal interpretation of the Bible. Creation science also
differed in terms of popular leadership, rhetorical tone, and sectional focus.
It lacked a prestigious leader like Bryan, utilized pseudoscientific rather
than religious rhetoric, and was a product of California and Michigan instead
of the South.[39]
Teaching of science
The Scopes
trial had both short and long term effects in the teaching of science in
schools in the United States. Though often upheld as a
blow for the fundamentalists in the form of waning public opinion, the
victory was not complete.[40] Though the ACLU had taken on the trial
as a cause, in the wake of Scopes’ conviction, they were unable to find any
volunteers to take on the Butler law and by 1932, the ACLU gave up.[41] The
anti-evolutionary legislation was not challenged again until 1965 and in
the meantime William Jennings Bryan's cause was taken up by a number of
organizations including the Bryan Bible League and the Defenders of the
Christian Faith.[41]
The immediate
effects of the trial are evident in the high school biology texts used in the
second half of the 1920s and the early 1930s. Of the most widely used
textbooks, there is only one listing evolution in the index and in the wake of
the trial, under the pressures of fundamentalist groups, the entry is countered
with biblical quotations.[40] The fundamentalists' target slowly
veered off of evolution in the mid-1930s. As the anti-evolutionist movement died
out, biology textbooks began to include the previously removed evolutionary
theory.[41] This also corresponds to the emerging
demand that science textbooks be written by scientists rather than educators or
education specialists.[40]
In 1958 the National Defense Education Act was passed with the encouragement of
many legislators who feared the United States education system was falling behind
that of the Soviet Union. The act yielded textbooks, produced in cooperation
with the American Institute of Biological Sciences, which stressed the
importance of evolution as the unifying principle of biology.[41] The new educational regime was not
unchallenged. The greatest backlash was in Texas where attacks were launched in
sermons and in the press.[40] Complaints were lodged with the State
Textbook Commission. However, in addition to federal support, a number of
social trends had turned public discussion in favor of evolution. These
included increased interest in improving public education, legal precedents
separating religion and public education, and continued urbanization in the
South. This led to a weakening of the backlash in Texas, as well as to the
repeal of the Butler Law in Tennessee in 1967.[40] In 1987,
however, the issue once again reached the Court in the case of Edwards v.
Aguillard, in which the Court in a 7-to-2 vote found unconstitutional a
Louisiana law which required creationism to be taught alongside evolution in
public schools. Though the law did not mention God or the Bible, the clear
intention was to include creationism as a science equal to the theory of
evolution. At the time, this ruling seemed like the final defeat for
creationism and the fundamentalist push to teach the idea in the schools. As Lawrence
says,
"[They] used the teaching of evolution as a parable, a metaphor for
any kind of thought control. It's not about science versus religion. It's about
the right to think."
Speaking out
most vocally for the religious right is Buchanan. Buchanan has stated: "I
think [parents] have a right to insist that Godless evolution not be taught to
their children or their children not be indoctrinated in it "(38).
In Georgia,
this year, the school district of Hall County has adopted a policy requiring
that the teaching of evolution include discussion of creationism. Alabama is
planning to insert a disclaimer in biology textbooks statewide reading:
"No one was present when life first appeared on earth. Therefore, any
statement about life's origins should be considered as theory, not fact
"(39). Tennessee, therefore, is just one of many Southern state adopting
such policies approving of creationism. Just last month, March 1996, the
Tennessee Senate considered a new "Monkey Bill", which would allow
school boards to dismiss teachers who teach evolution as fact. And in February,
the Tennessee legislature passed a bill urging homes, businesses places of
worship and schools to post and observe the Ten Commandments, also rejecting an
amendment to the proposed law that would exempt Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist
houses of worship from complying. The evolution bill eventually failed in the
Tennessee Senate by a 20-to-13 vote on March 28 of this year. But the very
consideration of a law such as this suggests that, as the country, we are much
closer to the past than we often realize.
Publicity and drama
Publicity
Edward J. Larson, a historian who won the Pulitzer Prize for History for his book Summer for the Gods:
The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion,
notes: "Like so many archetypal American events, the trial itself began as
a publicity stunt."[42] The press coverage of the "Monkey
Trial" was overwhelming.[43] The front pages of newspapers like The New York Times were dominated by the case for days. More than 200
newspaper reporters from all parts of the country and two from London were in Dayton.[44] Twenty-two telegraphers sent out 165,000 words per day on the
trial over thousands of miles of telegraph wires hung for the purpose;[44] more words were transmitted to Britain
about the Scopes trial than for any previous American event.[44] Trained chimpanzees performed on the courthouse lawn.[44] Chicago's WGN radio station broadcast the trial with
announcer Quin Ryan via clear-channel broadcasts for the first on-the-scene coverage of a criminal trial. Two
movie cameramen had their film flown out daily in a small plane from a
specially prepared airstrip. H.L. Mencken's trial
reports were heavily slanted against the prosecution and the jury, which was
"unanimously hot for Genesis." He mocked the town's
inhabitants as "yokels" and "morons." He called Bryan a
"buffoon" and his speeches "theologic bilge." In contrast,
he called the defense "eloquent" and "magnificent." Even today some American creationists, fighting in courts and state
legislatures to demand that creationism be taught on an equal footing with
evolution in the schools, have claimed that it was Mencken's trial reports in
1925 that turned public opinion against creationism.[45] The media's
portrayal of Darrow's cross-examination of Bryan, and the play and movie Inherit the Wind, caused millions of
Americans to ridicule religious-based opposition to the theory of evolution.[46] The trial also
brought publicity to the town of Dayton, Tennessee, and was hatched as a
publicity stunt.[43] From The Salem Republican, June
11, 1925:
The whole
matter has assumed the portion of Dayton and her merchants endeavoring to
secure a large amount of notoriety and publicity with an open question as
whether Scopes is a party to the plot or not.
Court house
At the site of
the trial, the Rhea County Courthouse in Dayton, a $1-million restoration
project was completed in 1979, which restored the second-floor courtroom to its
original appearance during the Scopes trial. A museum of trial events in its
basement contains such memorabilia as the microphone used to broadcast the
trial, trial records, photographs, and an audiovisual history. Every July local
people re-enact key moments in the courtroom.[47] In front of the courthouse stands a commemorative
plaque erected by the Tennessee Historical Commission:
2B 23
THE SCOPES TRIAL
Here, from July 10 to 21, 1925 John
Thomas Scopes, a County High School
teacher, was tried for teaching that
a man descended from a lower order
of animals in violation of a lately
passed state law. William Jennings
Bryan assisted the prosecution;
Clarence Darrow, Arthur Garfield
Hays, and Dudley Field Malone the
defense. Scopes was convicted.
Humor
Anticipating
that Scopes would be found guilty, the press fitted the defendant for martyrdom
and created an onslaught of ridicule. Time's initial coverage of the
trial focused on Dayton as "the fantastic cross between a circus and a
holy war." Life adorned its masthead with monkeys reading books and
proclaimed, "the whole matter is something to laugh about."[50] Hosts of cartoonists added their own
portrayals to the attack. (The greatest collection of cartoons available would
be the 14 reprinted in L. Sprague de Camp's The Great Monkey Trial.) Both Literary Digest and the popular humor magazine Life
(1890–1930) ran compilations of jokes and humorous observations garnered from
newspapers around the country.[51]
Overwhelmingly,
the butt of these jokes was the prosecution and those aligned
with it: Bryan, the city of Dayton, the state of Tennessee, and the entire
South, as well as fundamentalist Christians and anti-evolutionists. Rare
exceptions were found in the Southern press, where the fact that Darrow had
saved Leopold and Loeb from the death penalty continued to be a source of ugly
humor. The most widespread form of this ridicule was directed at the
inhabitants of Tennessee.[52] Life described Tennessee as
"not up to date in its attitude to such things as evolution."[53] Time related Bryan's arrival in
town with the disparaging comment, "The populace, Bryan's to a moron,
yowled a welcome."[54]
Attacks on
Bryan were frequent and acidic: Life awarded him its "Brass Medal
of the Fourth Class," for having "successfully demonstrated by the
alchemy of ignorance hot air may be transmuted into gold, and that the Bible is
infallibly inspired except where it differs with him on the question of wine,
women, and wealth."[55] Papers across the country routinely
dismissed the efforts of both sides in the trial, while the European press
reacted to the entire affair with amused condescension.
Famously vituperative
attacks came from journalist H. L. Mencken, whose syndicated columns from Dayton
for The Baltimore Sun drew vivid caricatures of the "backward"
local populace, referring to the people of Rhea County as "Babbits,"
"morons," "peasants," "hill-billies,"
"yaps," and "yokels." He chastised the "degraded
nonsense which country preachers are ramming and hammering into yokel
skulls." However, Mencken did enjoy certain aspects of Dayton, writing,
"The town, I confess, greatly surprised me. I expected to find a squalid
Southern village, with darkies snoozing on the horse-blocks, pigs rooting under
the houses and the inhabitants full of hookworm and malaria. What I found was a
country town full of charm and even beauty—a somewhat smallish but nevertheless
very attractive Westminster or Balair." He described Rhea County as
priding itself on a kind of tolerance or what he called "lack of Christian
heat," opposed to outside ideas but without hating those who held them.[56] He pointed out, "The Klan has
never got a foothold here, though it rages everywhere else in Tennessee."[57] Mencken attempted to perpetrate a
hoax, distributing flyers for the "Rev. Elmer Chubb," but the claims
that Chubb would drink poison and preach in lost languages were ignored as
commonplace by the people of Dayton and only the Commonweal bit.[58] Mencken continued to attack Bryan,
including in his famously withering obituary of Bryan, "In Memoriam:
W.J.B.", in which he charged Bryan with "insincerity"—not for
his religious beliefs but for the inconsistent and contradictory positions he
took on a number of political questions during his career.[59] Years later, Mencken did question
whether dismissing Bryan "as a quack pure and unadulterated" was
"really just."[60] Mencken's columns made the Dayton
citizens irate and drew general fire from the Southern press.[61] After Raulston ruled against the
admission of scientific testimony, Mencken left Dayton, declaring in his last
dispatch, "All that remains of the great cause of the State of Tennessee
against the infidel Scopes is the formal business of bumping off the
defendant."[62] Consequently, the journalist missed
Darrow's cross-examination of Bryan on Monday.
Stage and film
The play Inherit the Wind (1955), by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, was loosely based on this trial. The
play turned Darrow and Bryan into characters named Henry Drummond and Matthew
Brady.[63] In its preface
("disclaimer") the play claims to be both unbiased and not based on
any actual event. The play was made into a 1960 film directed by Stanley Kramer, with Spencer Tracy as Drummond and Fredric March as Brady. There have also been a trio
of television versions, with Melvyn Douglas and Ed Begley in 1965, Jason Robards and Kirk Douglas in 1988, and Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott in 1999. The Scopes trial did not
appear in the Encyclopædia Britannica until 1957, when its inclusion was
spurred by the successful run of Inherit the Wind on Broadway, which was mentioned in the citation.
It was not until the 1960s that the Scopes trial began to be mentioned in the
history textbooks of American high schools and colleges, usually as an example
of the conflict between fundamentalists and modernists, and often in sections
that also talked about the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the South.[64]
The play Inherit
the Truth (1987), by Gale Johnson, was based around the original
transcripts of the case.[65] Inherit the Truth was performed
yearly during the Dayton Scopes Festival until it ended its run in 2009.[66] The play was written as a rebuttal to
the 1955 play and the 1960, which local Daytons claim did not accurately depict
the trial or William Jennings Bryan.[67] In 2007 Bryan College purchased the rights to the production
and began work on a student film version of the film, which it viewed at that
year's Scopes Festival.[68][69] In 2011, Alleged, a film starring Brian Dennehy as Clarence Darrow and Fred Thompson as William Jennings Bryan was release
by Two Shoes Productions. Alleged is a
romantic drama set around the Scopes Trial.[70] While the main storyline is fictional,
all of the courtroom scenes are accurate to the actual trial transcript.
Related cases
See also
Notes
2.
^ Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., ed. Controversy
in the Twenties: Fundamentalism, Modernism, & Evolution (1969)
3.
^ Ferenc M. Szasz, "William B.
Riley and the Fight against Teaching of Evolution in Minnesota." Minnesota
History 1969 41(5): 201-216.
4.
^ Edward J. Larson, Summer for the
Gods: And America's Continuing Debate over Science And Religion (2006)
5.
^ a b See Supreme Court of Tennessee John Thomas Scopes v. The State, at end of opinion filed January 17,
1927. The court did not address the question of how the assessment of the
minimum possible statutory fine, when the defendant had been duly convicted,
could possibly work any prejudice against the defendant.
7.
^ The Great Monkey Trial, by L. Sprague
de Camp, Doubleday, 1968
9.
^ Presley, James and Scopes, John T. Center
of the Storm. p.60. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.(1967)
10.
^ Larson 1997, p. 108 "Scopes had urged
the students to testify against him, and coached them in their answers."
13.
^ The New York Times May 26,
1925: pp. 1, 16
14.
^ de Camp, pp. 81–86.
15.
^ de Camp, pp. 72–74, 79
16.
^ Scopes and Presley, Center of the
Storm. pp. 66–67.
17.
^ Constance Areson Clark,
"Evolution for John Doe: Pictures, The Public, and the Scopes Trial
Debate." Journal of American History 2000 87(4): 1275-1303. in JSTOR
18.
^ "Evolution in Tennessee." Outlook
140 (29 July 1925), pp. 443-44.
19.
^ Larson, Edward J., "Summer for
the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and
Religion"(1997), pp. 108-109. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University
Press (1998).
20.
^ a b Scopes, John Thomas et al. (1971), The
world's most famous court trial, State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes;
complete stenographic report of the court test of the Tennessee anti-evolution
act at Dayton, July 10 to 21, 1925, including speeches and arguments of
attorneys, New York: Da Capo Press, pp. 174–78
22.
^ Scopes and Presley, Center of the
Storm, pp. 154–56.
24.
^ Arthur Garfield Hays, Let Freedom
Ring (New York: Liveright, 1937), pp. 71–72; Charles Francis Potter, The
Preacher and I (New York: Crown, 1951), pp. 275–76.
25.
^ de Camp, pp. 364–65
26.
^ Kirtley F. Mather, "Creation and
Evolution", in Science Ponders Religion, ed. Harlow Shapley (New
York: Apple fart ton-Century-Crofts, 1960), pp. 32–45.
29.
^ The New York Times, July 22,
1925: p. 2.
32.
^ The New York Times 16 January
1927: 1, 28.
33.
^ David Goetz, "The Monkey
Trial". Christian History 1997 16(3): pp. 10-18. 0891-9666
34.
^ Edwards (2000); Moran (2004)
35.
^ William V. Trollinger, God's
Empire: William Bell Riley and Midwestern Fundamentalism (1991).
36.
^ R. Halliburton, Jr., "The
Adoption of Arkansas' Anti-Evolution Law," Arkansas Historical
Quarterly 23 (Autumn 1964): 280
37.
^ a b Christopher K. Curtis,
"Mississippi's Anti-Evolution Law of 1926." Journal Of Mississippi
History 1986 48(1): pp. 15-29.
38.
^ George E. Webb, "The Evolution
Controversy in Arizona and California: From the 1920s to the 1980s". Journal
of the Southwest 1991 33(2): pp. 133-150. 0894-8410.
40.
^ a b c d e Grabiner, J.V. & Miller, P.D.,
Effects of the Scopes Trial, Science, New Series, Vol. 185, No. 4154 (September
6, 1974), pp. 832-837
41.
^ a b c d Moore, Randy, The American Biology
Teacher, Vol. 60, No. 8 (Oct., 1998), pp. 568-577
45.
^ S. L. Harrison, "The Scopes
'Monkey Trial' Revisited: Mencken and the Editorial Art of Edmund Duffy." Journal
Of American Culture 1994 17(4): pp. 55-63.
48.
^ National Park Service (April 2007). "National Historic Landmarks Survey:
List of National Historic Landmarks by State".
50.
^ E.S. Martin, Life 86 (July 16,
1925): p. 16.
51.
^ "Life Lines", Life 85
(June 18, 1925): 10; 85 (June 25, 1925): 6, 86 (July 2, 1925): 8; 86 (July 9,
1925): 6; 86 (July 30, 1925): 6; "Life's Encyclopedia," Life
85 (July 25, 1925): 23; Kile Croak, "My School in Tennessee," Life
86 (July 2, 1925); 4; Arthur Guiterman, "Notes for a Tennessee
Primer," Life 86 (July 16, 1925): 5; "Topics in Brief," Literary
Digest, for 86 (July 4, 1925): 18; 86 (July 11, 1925): 15; 86 (July 18,
1925): 15; 86 (July 25, 1925): 15, 86 (August 1, 1925): 17; 86 (August 8,
1925): 13.
52.
^ "Tennessee Goes
Fundamentalist," New Republic 42 (April 29, 1925): pp. 258–60;
Howard K. Hollister, "In Dayton, Tennessee," Nation 121 (July
8, 1925): pp. 61–62; Dixon Merritt, "Smoldering Fires," Outlook
140 (July 22, 1925): pp. 421–22.
53.
^ Martin, Life 86 (July 16,
1925): p. 16.
54.
^ "The Great Trial," Time
6 (July 20, 1926): p. 17.
55.
^ Life 86 (July 9, 1925): p. 7.
56.
^ Mencken, H.L., "Sickening Doubts
About Value of Publicity," The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 9, 1925.
57.
^ Edgar Kemler, The Irreverent Mr.
Mencken (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1948), pp. 175–90. For excerpts
from Mencken's reports see William Manchester, Sage of Baltimore: The Life
and Riotous Times of H.L. Mencken (New York: Andrew-Melrose, 1952) pp.
143–45, and D-Days at Dayton: Reflections on the Scopes Trial, ed. Jerry
R. Tompkins (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1965) pp. 35–51.
58.
^ H.L. Mencken, Heathen Days,
1890–1936 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1943) pp. 231–34; Michael Williams,
"Sunday in Dayton", Commonweal 2 (July 29, 1925): pp. 285–88.
59.
^ "In Memoriam: W.J.B." was
first printed in The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 27, 1925; rpt. by
Mencken in the American Mercury 5 (October 1925) pp. 158–60 in his Prejudices
(Fifth Series), pp. 64–74; and in http://www.archive.org/details/mencken017105mbp Cooke, Alistair, The Vintage
Mencken, Vintage Books, pp. 161-167.
60.
^ Mencken, Heathen Days, pp.
280–87.
61.
^ "Mencken Epithets Rouse Dayton's
Ire," The New York Times, July 17, 1925, 3.
64.
^ Lawrance Bernabo and Celeste Michelle
Condit (1990). "Two Stories of the Scopes Trial: Legal and Journalistic
Articulations of the Legitimacy of Science and Religion" in Popular
Trials: Rhetoric, Mass Media, and the Law, edited by Robert Hariman.
Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, pp. 82–83.
69.
^ Associated Press. College plans own
version of movie on evolution trial. Times Daily, Jul 7, 2007, p48
References
- de Camp, L. Sprague (1968), The Great Monkey Trial, Doubleday, ISBN 0-385-04625-1
- Clark,
Constance Areson (2000), "Evolution for John Doe: Pictures, The
Public, and the Scopes Trial Debate", Journal of American History
87 (4): 1275–1303, ISSN 1275-1303, JSTOR 2674729
- Conkin,
Paul K. (1998), When All the Gods Trembled: Darwinism, Scopes, and
American Intellectuals, pp. 185 pp., ISBN 0-8476-9063-6
- Edwards,
Mark (2000), "Rethinking the Failure of Fundamentalist Political
Antievolutionism after 1925", Fides et Historia 32 (2):
89–106, ISSN 0884-5379, PMID 17120377
- Folsom,
Burton W., Jr. (1988), "The Scopes Trial Reconsidered", Continuity
(12): 103–127, ISSN 0277-1446
- Gatewood,
Willard B., Jr., ed., ed. (1969), Controversy in the Twenties:
Fundamentalism, Modernism, & Evolution
- Harding,
Susan (1991), "Representing Fundamentalism: The Problem of the
Repugnant Cultural Other", Social Research 58 (2):
373–393
- Larson, Edward J. (1997), Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's
Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion, BasicBooks, ISBN 0-465-07509-6
- Larson, Edward J. (2004), Evolution, Modern
Library, ISBN 0-679-64288-9
- Lienesch,
Michael (2007), In the Beginning: Fundamentalism, the Scopes Trial, and
the Making of the Antievolution Movement, University of North Carolina
Press, pp. 350pp, ISBN 0-8078-3096-8
- Menefee,
Samuel Pyeatt (2001), "Reaping the Whirlwind: A Scopes Trial
Bibliography", Regent University Law Review 13 (2):
571–595
- Moran,
Jeffrey P. (2002), The Scopes Trial: A Brief History with Documents,
Bedford/St. Martin's, pp. 240pp, ISBN 0-312-24919-5
- * Moran,
Jeffrey P. (2004), "The Scopes Trial and
Southern Fundamentalism in Black and White: Race, Region, and
Religion", Journal of Southern History 70 (1):
95–120, doi:10.2307/27648313, JSTOR 27648313, http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5005987461
- Smout,
Kary Doyle (1998), The Creation/Evolution Controversy: A Battle for
Cultural Power, pp. 210 pp, ISBN 0-275-96262-8
- Scopes,
John T.; Presley, James (June
1967), Center of the Storm: Memoirs of John T. Scopes, Henry Holt
& Company, ISBN 0-03-060340-4
- Tompkins,
Jerry R. (1968), D-Days at Dayton: Reflections on the Scopes Trial,
Louisiana State University Press, pp. 172 pp.
Further reading
- Ginger,
Ray, Six Days or Forever?, ISBN 0-19-519784-4
- Mencken, H.L., A Religious Orgy in Tennessee,
Melville House Publishing, ISBN 978-1-933633-17-6
- Scopes,
John, The World's Most Famous Court Trial, State of Tennessee vs. John
Thomas Scopes: Complete Stenographic Report of the Court, ISBN 0-306-71975-4
- Larson, Edward J., Summer for the Gods, ISBN 0-674-85429-2
External links
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Playwrights
Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee wrote Inherit the Wind as a response to the
threat to intellectual freedom presented by the anti-communist hysteria of the
McCarthy era. Lawrence and Lee used the Scopes Trial, then safely a generation
in the past, as a vehicle for exploring a climate of anxiety and
anti-intellectualism that existed in 1950.
Many Americans
know the Scopes trial not from history books but from "Inherit the
Wind," an excellent work of drama and one of the most popular plays of the
postwar era. "Inherit the Wind" opened on Broadway in 1955, with Paul
Muni playing Clarence Darrow, Ed Begley as William Jennings Bryan, and the
young Tony Randall as H.L. Mencken. It was a long-running hit. The well-known
United Artists movie followed in 1960, with Spencer Tracy, Frederick March, and
Gene Kelly in the lead roles; made-for-TV versions appeared in 1988 and 1999,
with George C. Scott winning an Emmy for his role in the 1999 production. Along
the way, "Inherit the Wind" became one of the most-produced plays in
high school theater, meaning many millions of boys and girls were exposed to it
in their teens. It's safe to say that 99% of viewers of the play and movie
assume that what they are seeing is veracious history. They are not.
"Inherit
the Wind" relentlessly distorts what happened in Dayton, Tenn., in 1925.
The authors, Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee, originally asserted that
"Inherit the Wind" should not be viewed as historically accurate:
They changed Darrow's name to "Henry Drummond" and Bryan's name to
"Mathew Harrison Brady," saying this was to remind audiences that
they were taking liberties with the actual event. But lines of dialogue from
the actual Scopes trial are used in the play, and the marketing of the Broadway
version of both movies worked heavily to create the suggestion that audiences
were seeing the actuality of the event. Reviewing the movie opening in 1960,
for example, The New York Times proclaimed, "A fascinating slice of
American history brought brilliantly to the screen."
"Inherit
the Wind" differs from the actual Scopes trial in ways minor, middling,
and substantive. Many minor differences are theatrical license. "Inherit
the Wind" begins with John Scopes languishing in jail for the crime of
free thought; Scopes was never jailed, and in fact, volunteered to be
prosecuted. (See main story.) The play has William Jennings Bryan fall down
dead in the courtroom just after the verdict and sentence are read; the real
Bryan died five days after the trial's conclusion. Having a character die in
court might be dismissed as a mere preposterous theatricality, of the sort
found in many dramas and films. In this case, however, theatrical license adds
the overloaded twist that God is striking Bryan down for being wrong about
evolution.
A middling
difference between "Inherit the Wind" and the real thing is the
depiction of the people of Dayton. In the play, townspeople are portrayed as
uneducated and 100% anti-Darwin, though polite and neighborly; a mild
misrepresentation of the actual event, at which the town and the courtroom
crowd split between pro-fundamentalist and pro-science factions. Both movie
versions of "Inherit the Wind" preposterously caricature the local
population, presenting the Dayton townspeople as ignorant, mean-spirited
rednecks looking for someone to denounce. In the 1960 movie, townspeople hurl
rocks at John Scopes and burn him in effigy; neither thing actually happened.
Another
middling difference between "Inherit the Wind" and the real Dayton
trial are the characters Rachel and Reverend Brown. Rachel is presented as the
fiancée of defendant Scopes, and a sweet, guileless ingenue; Reverend Brown as
her bigoted, heartless father, and also the leading local minister. Neither
existed in real life, Scopes not being engaged at the trial and no one
answering Reverend Brown's description playing any role in it. Creating a love
interest for the protagonist is hardly new for dramatists, of course; but what
Rachel and Reverend Brown say take them across the line into historical
distortion. In the play's harshest anti-religion scene, Reverend Brown prays
before his congregation that Scopes be sent to hell. When Rachel rushes forward
to tell him to stop, Reverend Brown turns on her and, screaming fanaticism,
denounces his own daughter to hell. This utterly fabricated moment is presented
to audiences as having the same historical validity as the trial itself.
Another
middling difference between "Inherit the Wind" and the actual Scopes
trial is the cartoonish depiction of William Jennings Bryan. In the play and
the movies, Bryan is shown as a huffing simpleton interested exclusively in
far-right views and in hearing himself talk. The real William Jennings Bryan
was secretary of state during the liberal Woodrow Wilson administration and
was, in his day, one of the country's leading male advocates of women's
suffrage. (It is true that he liked to hear himself talk.) During his
presidential campaigns, Bryan ran as a populist whose concerns were focused on
economic opportunity for the urban working class and small farmers. Bryan was
also a member of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science and had
debated some of the leading paleontologists of his day. Bryan might have been
wrong about Darwin's theory, but he was wrong out of conviction, not ignorance.
While making
Bryan seem a monstrously unpleasant simpleton, "Inherit the Wind"
presents Clarence Darrow as a humble, aw-shucks figure. The actual Darrow was a
harsh-tongued elitist who was respected but widely disliked, in part because he
never missed a chance to praise his own intellect. (For insistence, at the real
Scopes trial, Darrow snapped to Bryan, "I am examining you on your fool
ideas that no intelligent Christian on earth believes.") By making the Bryan
character seem insufferable and the Darrow character homespun and genuine,
"Inherit the Wind" flip-flopped the history of the event, in order to
stack the deck against religious views.
Interpretations
of characters are, of course, authors' prerogatives. That leaves the most
substantive complaint against "Inherit the Wind," that it altered the
bedrock facts of the trial, to present as "history" things that never
happened. What was said at the trial is not a matter for generalized
speculation; there is a transcript. The "Inherit the Wind" authors
cited a few lines from the transcript, in order to lend their work the sheen of
scrupulousness, and then went on to alter central facts of the case.
For example,
the point in "Inherit the Wind" at which faith looks most stupid is
when William Jennings Bryan obstinately insists the world must have been formed
in precisely 4,004 B.C.E. But at the trial, Bryan specifically rejected this
view.
Here is the
exchange from "Inherit the Wind." Bryan, not Darrow, has raised the
question of the 4,004 B.C.E. theory, which originated with the 17th-century
Irish Bishop James Ussher:
William
Jennings Bryan ("Mathew Harrison Brady"): A fine Biblical scholar,
Bishop Ussher, has determined for us the exact date and hour of the creation.
It occurred in the year 4,004 B.C.
Clarence Darrow
("Henry Drummond"): That is Bishop Ussher's opinion.
Bryan: It is
not an opinion. It is a literal fact, which the good bishop arrived at through
careful computation of the ages of the prophets as set down in the Old
Testament. In fact he determined that the Lord began the creation on the 23rd
of October in the year 4,004 B.C. at--uh, at 9 a.m.!
Darrow: That
Eastern Standard Time?
(Laughter in
the court.)
Here is the
actual exchange from the trial transcript, in which Darrow is the one who
raises the subject. At this point, they have been discussing the 4,004 date,
and Darrow stumbles by suggesting that a 4,004 creation would make the Earth
"4,000" years old:
Darrow: Would
you say that the earth was only 4,000 years old?
Bryan: Oh, no;
I think it is much older than that.
Darrow: How
much?
Bryan: I
couldn't say.
At the actual
trial, Clarence Darrow made several attempts to get Bryan to endorse the 4,004
B.C.E. creation date, and each time Bryan refused. In the play, it is Bryan who
brings up the subject and dives in, while Darrow gets to play fair-minded,
suggesting that 4,004 dating is merely someone's "opinion."
At another
point in "Inherit the Wind," Darrow asks Bryan if he's read the book
he is objecting to, "On the Origin of Species":
Darrow
("Drummond"): I don't suppose you've memorized many passages from the
"Origin of Species"?
Bryan
("Brady"): I am not in the least interested in the pagan hypothesis
of that book.
Darrow: Never
read it?
Bryan: And I
never will.
Darrow: Then
how in perdition do you have the gall to whoop up this holy war against
something you don't know anything about?
In fact, Bryan
had read "On the Origin of Species" some 20 years before the Scopes
trial and had engaged in a running debate about the book with Henry Fairfield
Osborn, then president of the American Museum of Natural History and roughly
the Carl Sagan of his day. By pretending that Bryan was attacking something he
refused to read, "Inherit the Wind" makes it seem that anyone who
disagrees with Darwin must be willfully uninformed.
Alteration of
history in "Inherit the Wind" reaches the point of outright duplicity
in Bryan's two final scenes, in which he is portrayed as transformed into a
demented maniac.
The first such
scene comes at the end of the Darrow-Bryan courtroom confrontation. At the
actual trial, the judge, sensing the bantering between the two was going
nowhere, simply adjourned court till the following day, and everyone rose and
left. In "Inherit the Wind," this happens:
Stage
directions: Brady [Bryan] is almost in a frenzy.
Bryan: All of
you know what I stand for! What I believe! I believe, I believe in the truth of
the Book of Genesis!
(Beginning to
chant.)
Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Kings, First Samuel, Second
Samuel, First Kings, Second Kings--
Darrow: Your
Honor, this completes the testimony. The witness is excused.
Bryan:
(Pounding the
air with his fists.)
Isaiah,
Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obediah--
There is
confusion in the court. The judge raps his gavel.
Judge: You are
excused.
Bryan: Jonah,
Micah, Nahum, Habbakkuk, Zephaniah--
Brady [Bryan]
beats his clenched fists in the air with every name. There is a rising
counterpoint of reaction from the spectators.
This scene goes
on, Bryan shouting the names of the books of the Bible with deranged fury as
the townspeople jeer him. Then Bryan collapses on the witness stand and has a
nervous breakdown, his wife rushing forward to console him. Nothing remotely
similar to this happened at the actual trial. (Bryan's wife, who was bedridden,
did not even attend.)
In the last
courtroom scene of "Inherit the Wind," as the trial ends, Bryan
insists on making a closing statement, waving what the stage directions call
"a thick manuscript." He seizes the floor and begins a second
disjointed speech, shouting:
Bryan: My dear
friends! Your attention please! Fellow citizens, and friends of the unseen
audience. From the hallow hills of sacred Sinai, in the days of remote
antiquity, came the law which has been our bulwark and shield. Age upon age,
men have looked to the law as they would to the mountains—
Bryan's last
speech in "Inherit the Wind" goes downhill from there, gradually
becoming unhinged. Spectators at first jeer Bryan, and then ignore him; at this
point, Bryan drops down dead.
At the actual
trial, Bryan had been planning to read a two-page closing statement but shifted
gears when called by Darrow to the stand; copies of Bryan's summation were
later simply handed out to reporters.
Here is the
first section of the actual closing statement by William Jennings Bryan from
the Scopes trial:
"Science
is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect
machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse
of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs
no moral rudders for the control of storm-tossed human vessel. It not only
fails to supply the spiritual element needed but some of its unproven
hypotheses rob the ship of its compass and thus endanger its cargo. In war,
science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it
ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellow men on a single
plane--the earth's surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water
and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above,
thus making the battlefield three times as bloody as it was before; but science
does not teach brotherly love. Science has made war so hellish that
civilization was about to commit suicide; and now we are told that newly discovered
instruments of destruction will make the cruelties of the late war seem trivial
in comparison with the cruelties of wars that may come in the future. If
civilization is to be saved from the wreckage threatened by intelligence not
consecrated by love, it must be saved by the moral code of the meek and lowly
Nazarene. His teachings, and His teachings alone, can solve the problems that
vex the heart and perplex the world."
There's plenty
to disagree with in the above statement, and Bryan went on to use the phrase
"a Christian state" to describe what the United States should be, an
idea to which even many Christians would object. (Read the complete summation.)
But the actual words Bryan chose to end the Scopes trial with are not raving dogma;
they are thoughtful and prescient. Warning that science must be restrained by
morals and love is a progressive sentiment; turning against Darwin was just the
wrong way to argue this point. Note especially Bryan's concern, stated in the
year 1925 when it was generally thought that the Great War would be the last
war ever: "Now we are told that newly discovered instruments of
destruction will make the cruelties of the late war seem trivial in comparison
with the cruelties of wars that may come in the future."
"Inherit
the Wind" was written in the early 1950s, when McCarthyism and
anti-intellectualism were insidious forces in American life. If the authors
monkeyed around with the facts of the Scopes trial in order to add power to a
message about freedom of speech, to a point their objective was defensible.
But the
altering of history in this play and its subsequent movie imitators has
backfired in two ways: first, by making the argument between science and
religion seem much more destructive than there is any reason for it to be, and
second, by using intellectual dishonesty in the name of intellectual freedom.
Science and
religion might not be such an overheated topic in American public debate if
hundreds of theatrical productions and two movies had not advanced the false
notion that the Scopes trial demonstrated that these two forces are engaged in
a duel to the death. And because "Inherit the Wind" alters history to
advance its thesis, the play is itself anti-intellectual--an exercise in
thought manipulation, rather than an honest debate about a complicated case. If
there is going to be an argument between science and religion, let's hear the
best arguments from each side, not the best from one side and slanted
fabrications from another. This play's title comes from the biblical verse that
cautions, "Whoever troubles his own house shall inherit the wind."
The time has come to retire "Inherit the Wind," which now troubles
its own house.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
The early 1920s
found social patterns in chaos. Traditionalists, the older Victorians, worried
that everything valuable was ending. Younger modernists no longer asked whether
society would approve of their behavior, only whether their behavior met the approval
of their intellect. Intellectual experimentation flourished. Americans danced
to the sound of the Jazz Age, showed their contempt for alcoholic prohibition,
debated abstract art and Freudian theories. In a response to the new social
patterns set in motion by modernism, a wave of revivalism developed, becoming
especially strong in the American South.
Who would dominate American culture--the
modernists or the traditionalists? Journalists were looking for a showdown, and
they found one in a Dayton, Tennessee courtroom in the summer of 1925. There a
jury was to decide the fate of John Scopes, a high school biology teacher
charged with illegally teaching the theory of evolution. The guilt or innocence
of John Scopes, and even the constitutionality of Tennessee's anti-evolution
statute, mattered little. The meaning of the trial emerged through its
interpretation as a conflict of social and intellectual values.
William Jennings Bryan, three-time
Democratic candidate for President and a populist, led a Fundamentalist crusade
to banish Darwin's theory of evolution from American classrooms. Bryan's
motivation for mounting the crusade is unclear. It is possible that Bryan, who
cared deeply about equality, worried that Darwin's theories were being used by
supporters of a growing eugenics movement that was advocating sterilization of
"inferior stock." More likely, the Great Commoner came to his cause
both out a concern that the teaching of evolution would undermine traditional
values he had long supported and because he had a compelling desire to remain
in the public spotlight--a spotlight he had occupied since his famous
"Cross of Gold" speech at the 1896 Democratic Convention. Bryan, in
the words of columnist H. L. Mencken, who covered the Scopes Trial, transformed
himself into a "sort of Fundamentalist Pope." By 1925, Bryan and his
followers had succeeded in getting legislation introduced in fifteen states to
ban the teaching of evolution. In February, Tennessee enacted a bill introduced
by John Butler making it unlawful "to teach any theory that denies the
story of divine creation as taught by the Bible and to teach instead that man
was descended from a lower order of animals."
The Scopes Trial had its origins in a
conspiracy at Fred Robinson's drugstore in Dayton. George Rappalyea, a
31-year-old transplanted New Yorker and local coal company manager, arrived at
the drugstore with a copy of a paper containing an American Civil Liberties
Union announcement that it was willing to offer its services to anyone
challenging the new Tennessee anti-evolution statute. Rappalyea, a modernist
Methodist with contempt for the new law, argued to other town leaders that a
trial would be a way of putting Dayton on the map. Listening to Rappalyea, the
others--including School Superintendent Walter White--became convinced that
publicity generated by a controversial trial might help their town, whose
population had fallen from 3,000 in the 1890's to 1,800 in 1925.
The conspirators summoned John Scopes, a
twenty-four-year old general science teacher and part-time football coach, to
the drugstore. As Scopes later described
the meeting, Rappalyea said, "John, we've been arguing and I said nobody
could teach biology without teaching evolution." Scopes agreed. "That's right," he said, pulling a
copy of Hunter's Civic Biology--the state-approved textbook--from one of the
shelves of the drugstore (the store also sold school textbooks). "You've been teaching 'em this book?"
Rappalyea asked. Scopes replied that
while filling in for the regular biology teacher during an illness, he had
assigned readings on evolution from the book for review purposes. "Then
you've been violating the law," Rappalyea concluded. "Would you be willing to stand for a
test case?" he asked. Scopes agreed. He later explained his decision:
"the best time to scotch the snake is when it starts to wiggle."
Herbert and Sue Hicks, two local attorneys and friends of Scopes, agreed to
prosecute.
Rappalyea initially wanted science fiction
writer H. G. Wells to head the defense team. "I am sure that in the
interest of science Mr. Wells will consent," Rappalyea predicted. Wells
had no interest in taking the case, but others did. John Neal, an eccentric law
school dean from Knoxville, drove to Dayton and volunteered to represent
Scopes. When William Jennings Bryan offered to join the prosecution
team--despite having not practiced law in over thirty years--, Clarence Darrow,
approaching seventy, jumped to join the battle in Dayton. Darrow was not the first
choice of the ACLU, who was concerned that Darrow's zealous agnosticism might
turn the trial into a broadside attack on religion.The ACLU first preferred
former presidential candidates John W. Davies and Charles Evans Hughes, but
neither was willing to serve alongside Darrow. Instead, it dispatched Arthur
Garfield Hays, a prominent free speech advocate, to join the defense team. The
final member of the defense team was Dudley Field Malone, an international
divorce attorney (and another volunteer who the ACLU might have preferred to
stay at home). Completing the prosecution team in Dayton were present and
former attorneys general for Eastern Tennessee, A. T. Stewart and Ben B.
McKenzie, and Bryan's son, federal prosecutor William Jennings Bryan, Jr. Time has a way of simplifying events and
today Darrow and Bryan are remembered as the key adversaries in the trial, even
though Hays for the defense and Stewart for the prosecution played equally
important roles at the trial.
A carnival atmosphere pervaded Dayton as
the opening of the trial approached in July of 1925. Banners decorated the
streets. Lemonade stands were set up. Chimpanzees, said to have been brought to
town to testify for the prosecution, performed in a side show on Main Street.
Anti- Evolution League members sold copies of T. T. Martin's book Hell and the
High School. Holy rollers rolled in the surrounding hills and riverbanks.
Nearly a thousand people, 300 of whom were
standing, jammed the Rhea County Courthouse on July 10, 1925 for the first day
of trial. (Judge John T. Raulston, the presiding judge in the Scopes Trial, had
proposed moving the trial under a tent that would have seated 20,000 people).
Also in attendance were announcers ready to send to listeners the first live
radio broadcast from a trial. Judge Raulston, a conservative Christian who
craved publicity, was flanked by two police officers waving huge fans to keep
air circulating. The proceedings opened, over Darrow's objections, to a prayer.
A jury of twelve men, including ten (mostly
middle-aged) farmers and eleven regular church-goers, was quickly selected. The
trial adjourned for the weekend. On Sunday, William Jennings Bryan delivered
the sermon at Dayton's Methodist Church. He used the occasion to attack the defense
strategy in the Scopes case. As Bryan spoke, Judge Raulston and his entire
family listened attentively from their front pew seats.
On the first business day of trial, the
defense moved to quash the indictment on both state and federal constitutional
grounds. This move was at the heart of the defense strategy. The defense's goal was not to win acquittal
for John Scopes, but rather to obtain a declaration by a higher
court--preferably the U.S. Supreme Court--that laws forbidding the teaching of
evolution were unconstitutional. (That goal, however, would not be realized for
another 43 years, in the case of Epperson v. Arkansas ). As expected, Judge
Raulston denied the defense motion.
Opening statements pictured the trial as a
titanic struggle between good and evil or truth and ignorance. Bryan claimed
that "if evolution wins, Christianity goes." Darrow argued,
"Scopes isn't on trial; civilization is on trial." The prosecution,
Darrow contended, was "opening the doors for a reign of bigotry equal to
anything in the Middle Ages." To the gasps of spectators, Darrow said
Bryan was responsible for the "foolish, mischievous and wicked act."
Darrow said that the anti-evolution law made the Bible "the yardstick to
measure every man's intellect, to measure every man's intelligence, to measure
every man's learning." It was classic Darrow, and the press--mostly
sympathetic to the defense--loved it.
The prosecution opened its case by asking
the court to take judicial notice of the Book of Genesis, as it appears in the
King James version. It did. Superintendent White led off the prosecution's list
of witnesses with his testimony that John Scopes had admitted teaching about
evolution from Hunter's Civic Biology. Chief Prosecutor Tom Stewart then asked
seven students in Scope's class a series of questions about his teachings. They
testified that Scopes told them that man and all other mammals had evolved from
one-celled organism. Darrow cross-examined--gently, though with obvious
sarcasm--the students, asking freshman Howard Morgan: "Well, did he tell
you anything else that was wicked?" "No, not that I can
remember," Howard answered. After drugstore owner Fred Robinson took the
stand to testify as to Scope's statement that "any teacher in the state
who was teaching Hunter's Biology was violating the law," the prosecution
rested. It was a simple case.
On Thursday, July 16, the defense called
its first witness, Dr. Maynard Metcalf, a zoologist from the Johns Hopkins
University. The prosecution objected, arguing that the testimony was irrelevant
to Scopes' guilt or innocence under the statue. Before ruling the prosecution's
evidence, Judge Raulston decided to hear some of Dr. Metcalf's testimony about
the theory of evolution. The testimony evoked Bryan's only extended speech of
the trial. Bryan mocked Metcalf's exposition of the theory of evolution,
complaining that the evolutionists had man descending "not even from
American monkeys, but Old World monkeys." Dudley Malone countered for the
defense, arguing in a thundering voice that the prosecution's position was
borne of the same ignorance "which made it possible for theologians...to
bring Old Galilee to trial." It was a powerful speech. Anti-evolution
lawmaker John Butler called it "the finest speech of the century."
Members of the press gave Malone a standing ovation and most courtroom
spectators joined in the sustained applause. The next day, Raulston ruled the
defense's expert testimony inadmissible.
Raulston's ruling angered Darrow. He said
he could not understand why "every suggestion of the prosecution should
meet with an endless waste of time, and a bare suggestion of anything that is
perfectly competent on our part should be immediately overruled." Raulston
asked Darrow, "I hope you do not mean to reflect upon the court?"
Darrow's reply: "Well, your honor has the right to hope." Raulston
responded, "I have the right to do something else." The insult earned
Darrow a contempt finding, which was later dropped when Darrow, to a big hand
from spectators, apologized for his remark. Darrow and Raulston shook hands.
After expressing concern that the courtroom
floor might collapse from the weight of the many spectators, Raulston
transferred the proceedings to the lawn outside the courthouse. There, facing
the jury, hung a sign--attached to the courthouse wall-- reading, "Read
Your Bible." Darrow asked either that the sign be removed or that a second
sign of equal size saying "Read Your Evolution" be put up along with
it. Raulston ordered the sign removed. Before a crowd that had swelled to about
5,000, the defense read into the record, for purpose of appellate review,
excerpts from the prepared statements of eight scientists and four experts on
religion who had been prepared to testify. The statements of the experts were
widely reported by the press, helping Darrow succeed in his efforts to turn the
trial into a national biology lesson.
On the seventh day of trial, Raulston asked
the defense if it had any more evidence. What followed was what the New York
Times described as "the most amazing court scene on Anglo-Saxon
history." Hays asked that William Jennings Bryan be called to the stand as
an expert on the Bible. Bryan assented, stipulating only that he should have a
chance to interrogate the defense lawyers. Bryan, dismissing the concerns of
his prosecution colleagues, took a seat on the witness stand, and began fanning
himself.
Darrow began his interrogation of Bryan
with a quiet question: "You have given considerable study to the Bible,
haven't you, Mr. Bryan?" Bryan replied, "Yes, I have. I have studied
the Bible for about fifty years." Thus began a series of questions designed
to undermine a literalist interpretation of the Bible. Bryan was asked about a
whale swallowing Jonah, Joshua making the sun stand still, Noah and the great
flood, the temptation of Adam in the garden of Eden, and the creation according
to Genesis. After initially contending that "everything in the Bible
should be accepted as it is given there," Bryan finally conceded that the
words of the Bible should not always be taken literally. In response to
Darrow's relentless questions as to whether the six days of creation, as
described in Genesis, were twenty-four hour days, Bryan said "My
impression is that they were periods."
Bryan, who began his testimony calmly,
stumbled badly under Darrow's persistent prodding. At one point the exasperated
Bryan said, "I do not think about things I don't think about." Darrow
asked, "Do you think about the things you do think about?" Bryan
responded, to the derisive laughter of spectators, "Well, sometimes."
Both old warriors grew testy as the examination continued. Bryan accused Darrow
of attempting to "slur at the Bible." He said that he would continue
to answer Darrow's impertinent questions because "I want the world to know
that this man, who does not believe in God, is trying to use a court in Tennessee--."
Darrow interrupted his witness by saying, "I object to your
statement" and to "your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on
earth believes." After that outburst, Raulston ordered the court
adjourned. The next day, Raulston ruled that Bryan could not return to the
stand and that his testimony the previous day should be stricken from evidence.
The confrontation between Bryan and Darrow
was reported by the press as a defeat for Bryan. According to one historian,
"As a man and as a legend, Bryan was destroyed by his testimony that
day." His performance was described as that of "a pitiable, punch
drunk warrior." Darrow, however, has also not escaped criticism. Alan
Dershowitz, for example, contended that the celebrated defense attorney "comes
off as something of an anti-religious cynic."
The trial was nearly over. Darrow asked the
jury to return a verdict of guilty in order that the case might be appealed to
the Tennessee Supreme Court. Under Tennessee law, Bryan was thereby denied the
opportunity to deliver a closing speech he had labored over for weeks. The jury
complied with Darrow's request, and Judge Raulston fined him $100.
Six days after the trial, William Jennings
Bryan was still in Dayton. After eating an enormous dinner, he lay down to take
a nap and died in his sleep. Clarence Darrow was hiking in the Smoky Mountains
when word of Bryan's death reached him. When reporters suggested to him that
Bryan died of a broken heart, Darrow said "Broken heart nothing; he died
of a busted belly." In a louder voice he added, "His death is a great
loss to the American people."
A year later, the Tennessee Supreme Court
reversed the decision of the Dayton court on a technicality--not the
constitutional grounds as Darrow had hoped. According to the court, the fine
should have been set by the jury, not Raulston. Rather than send the case back
for further action, however, the Tennessee Supreme Court dismissed the case.
The court commented, "Nothing is to be gained by prolonging the life of
this bizarre case."
The Scopes trial by no means ended the
debate over the teaching of evolution, but it did represent a significant
setback for the anti-evolution forces. Of the fifteen states with anti-
evolution legislation pending in 1925, only two states (Arkansas and
Mississippi) enacted laws restricting teaching of Darwin's theory.
