A Scopes Test of 1925 pitted lawyers William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow (the latter representing teacher John T. Scopes) in an American court case that tested a law passed on March 13, 1925, which forbade the teaching, in any state-funded educational establishment in Tennessee, of "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." This is often interpreted as meaning that the law forbade the teaching of any aspect of the theory of evolution. It has typically been known as a "Scopes Monkey Trial".

Butler Act
At issue was a Butler Act, which had been passed two or three months earliest per Tennessee General Assembly. A Butler Work provided:

"That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, 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"

At the period, a theory of evolution was however a somewhat controversial idea potentially in scientific circles, & numbers of of its depreciator typically linked it by owning atheism.

William Jennings Bryan was extremely influential withwithin raising public & legislative trend lines for the Butler act, & he articulated numbers of of the above concerns in his promulgated work, Within His Image in which he argued that evolution wasTwo irrational & immoral.

Around heavy a portion following one concerns & Bryan's protagonism, a law-makers of Tennessee determined that it was incompatible to st& a theory of evolution taught publically schools, and passed a Butler Work.

Testing the Butler Act
A ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) had offered to defend anyone accused of teaching a theory of evolution around defiance of the Butler Work. George Rappelyethe, world health organization managed the total of local mines, convinced a class action of business community within Dayton, Tennessee, then the town of 1,800, that a contestation of such a test would put Dayton on the map. By having their agreement he known as inside his friend, 2 dozen-month-old John T. Scopes, world health organization was a Rhea County High School's football coach & world health organization got substituted for the principal inside the science class.

Rappelyethe pointed out that when a Butler Work prohibited a teaching of a theory of evolution, the state needed teachers to have a textbook - Hunter's Civic Biology - which explicitly described & endorsed a theory of evolution, and that teachers were so profits expected to break a law. Scopes couldn't actually remember getting covered a part around evolution in Hunter's text, however he told a class action "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."

Textbook in question

Although Hunter's Civic Biology was primarily the biology text edition, it reflected the marked bias towards eugenics - hence the apply of the word "Civic" in the title. Indeed, the portion of the text was in point of fact authored by Charles Davenport, director of the Eugenics Record Professional, a privately funded the food and drug administration organisation. This was one of a independent issues which fueled Bryan's opposition to evolutionary thought.

a text supported a notion of the inherent superiority of the caucasoid race, & promoted a eugenics-oriented policy as a means of eliminating the "genetically inferior" members of society:

"We do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways of preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race. Remedies of this sort have been tried successfully in Europe and are now meeting with success in this country."

Scopes was charged by owning with taught from either a chapter within evolutiin to a class at the High on April 24th, in violation of the Butler Work.

Trial
A original prosecutors were Scopes' friends, Herbert E. and Sue K. Hicks, a pair of brothers who were local attorneys (the latter was named for the mother who died giving him birth).

Hoping to attract major click coverage, George Rappleyea, a human primarily responsible convincing Scopes to allow himself to exist when charged by owning breaking the law, went thus far as to write to the British novelist H. G. Wells asking him to join the defense team. Wells replied that he experienced there is no legal expert instruction withinside Britain, not to mention in Usa, & declined a offer. All the same, John R. Neal, a law school professor from Knoxville, announced that he would act as Scopes' attorney - whether Scopes liked it or not - and became the notional head of the defense team. William Jennings Bryan, a fundamentalist Christian and three-period presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, offered to join the prosecution team. Inside response, Clarence Darrow, a halt agnostic, volunteered his services to the defense. Fallowing numbers of changes back & forth, a defense lawyers consisted of Darrow, ACLU lawyer Arthur Garfield Hays and Dudley Field Malone, an international divorce lawyer who experienced worked by using Bryan in the State Department while Bryan was Secretary of State. A prosecution team was led by Tom Stewart, district attorney for the 18th Circuit (& new United States Senator), & involved, additionally to Bryan & Herbert and Sue Hicks, Ben B. McKenzie, & William Jennings Bryan, Jr. A test was covered by journalists from either in the area of the world, including H. L. Mencken for The Baltimore Sun, which was also paying part of the defense's expenses. It was Mencken world health organization provided a test sustaining its virtually all colorful labels like a "Monkey trial" of "the infidel Scopes." It was besides a number 1 U.S. test to become broadcast in national radio.

A ACLU got originally designed to oppose a Butler Work on a evidence that it violated a separation of Church & State inside the public education body & was so unconstitutional. Around practice this was totally a incorrectly way to challenge a constitutionality of a law under Tennessee procedure, however a ACLU were around far off Future York & got little or even there are no understanding of how else items were waste Tennessee. & in any outbreak, ensuing a "proper procedure" would non use at times had a children the publicity it were wanting to find. Chiefly due to Clarence Darrow, this strategy changed when a test progressed, & a earliest argument projected per defense when a test experienced began was that there was actually there is no conflict between evolutionist ideas & a account in the Bible. Around trend lines of this claim it brought around eight "experts" in evolution, none of whom was allowed to testify personally, except Dr. Maynard Metcalf, though it were allowed to submit grounds to believe in a form of affidavits thus that their grounds to believe can be utilized at the appeal.

Per latter stages of a test, Clarence Darrow got abandoned the ACLU's strategy altogether, & resorted to an 100% out attack in William Jennings Bryan. Only the instance attend appeal did a defense go to to a original claim that a prosecution was shut-in because the law was fundamentally designed to advantage a particular religious group, which would be unconstitutional. To trend lines his contention that evolution was morally pernicious, Bryan cited a celebrated Leopold-Loeb Test involving Darrow a month prior to the Scopes Trial. Darrow experienced economized 2 rich immature tyke murderers from a demise phrase, & Bryan cited Darrow's have words:

Malone responded for a defense inside the speech that was always considered the oratorical triumph of the test. Arousing fears of "inquisitions," Malone argued that the Bible should exist as preserved in the realm of theology & morality & non put into a course of science. Within his gale-inflict guide, Malone declared that Bryan's "duel to the death" against evolution should non exist as processed a single-coloured by a court opinion that took away the main witnesses for the defense. Malone promised that there would exist as there are no duel because "There is never a duel with the truth." A court went uncivilized once Malone finished & Scopes himself declared Malone's speech to exist as a spectacular highpoint of the entire test & insisted that a portion of the cause Bryan wanted to last on the have was to regain occasionally of his tainted glory.

Cross-examination of Bryan

On a seventh day of the test, Clarence Darrow took the maverick step of calling William Jennings Bryan, direction for the prosecution, to the could have as an skilful witness within an effort to demonstrate that belief in the historicity of the Bible & its numerous accounts of miracles was unreasonable. Bryan accepted, on the understanding that Darrow would successively submit to cross-examination by Bryan.

Biblical miracles and creation days

Darrow questioned a story of Jonah, a account of the Globe standing however, & the Usher-Lightfoot Calendar. Bryan responded by firm adhering to belief in the reported miracles, however asserted that he did non understand how else old a Globe wwhen, as the Usher-Lightfoot Calendar was lone a calculation of men. While asked to teach you a utilise of the word "Day" in the number 1 chapter, he said: Unlike what happens in Inherit the Wind, where the Bryan-based character is essentially tricked into admitting the days of creation were not literal 24 hour days, Bryan knew where Darrow was trying to herd him and pre-empted the attack by admitting the point.

Darrow's motivation

The questioning continued into whether Eve was actually created from Adam's rib, where Cain got his wife, and how many people lived in Ancient Egypt. The celebrated "duel in the shade" was very heated with Darrow telling Bryan, "Your family insult each human of science & learning in the globe because he doesn't suppose for your fool religion." In response Bryan declared: "A cause We are answering is non for the gain of the superior court. These are to keep these gentlemen from either saying We wwhen afraid to meet a babies & let the two wonder pine tree state, & We personally desire the Christian globe to underst& that any atheist, agnostic, nonbeliever, could wonder maine whenever as to our belief inside God, and I may guide him."

Bryan, correctly gauging the effect the session was having, snapped that its purpose was "to cast ridicule in everybody world health organization believes in the Bible." Darrow, with equal vehemence, retorted, "I have a purpose of preventing bigots & know nothing from either controlling a education of the United States."

The confrontation between Bryan and Darrow lasted for 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. Darrow responded by asking the judge to instruct the jury to find his client guilty and 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. In so doing, Darrow prevented William Jennings Bryan from making the speech which he had come to Dayton to deliver; the speech which Bryan hoped would be the pinnacle of his career as a defender of Christian principles.

Scopes himself never testified, as there was never a legal issue as to whether he had taught evolution. (It seems highly likely that Scopes never did in fact actually teach any aspect of evolution, but the point was not contested at trial.)

After eight days of trial, during which Darrow was charged with contempt but later apologized, Scopes was found guilty on July 21 and ordered to pay a $100 fine. Bryan offered to pay it.

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: Second, the lawyers argued that the statute violated Scopes' rights under the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution, as 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: Third, it was argued that the terms of the Butler Act violated the Tennessee constitutional clause providing: "It shall be a duty of the General Assembly altogether first periods of this government, to cherish literature & 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 that the prohibition of the teaching of such theory is a violation of the legislative duty to cherish science.

The court rejected this argument, holding that the determination of what laws cherished science was an issue for the legislature, not the judiciary: Fourth, the defense lawyers argued that the statute violated the Establishment Clause, unconstitutionally establishing a state religion.

The Court rejected this argument, holding that the Establishment 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: 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 doctrine over the others.

Nevertheless, having found the statute to be constitutional, the Court set aside the conviction on appeal due to a technical issue: the jury should have decided the fine, not the judge, as Tennessee judges could not at that time set fines above $50. (There is no evidence that the fine money had ever changed hands in any event.) The prosecution did not seek a retrial.

Not until 1968 did the US Supreme Court rule in Epperson vs. Arkansas 393 U.S. 97 (1968) that such bans contravene the Establishment Clause because their primary purpose is religious. (Tennessee had previously repealed the Butler Act the prior year.)

Publicity and drama
Publicity
The press coverage of the "Monkey" Trial was overwhelming. The front pages of newspapers like the New York Times were dominated by the case for days. More than 100 newspaper reporters from all parts of the country and two from London were in Dayton. 22 telegraphers sent out 165,000 words a day on the trial. 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 "nemine contradicente hot for Genesis." He mocked the town's inhabitants as "hayseed" and "cretin". He called Bryan a "buffoon" and his speeches "theologic bilge". In contrast, he called the defense "facile" and "glorious". Some evolutionists have claimed that Mencken's trial reports turned public opinion against creationism, though few people seem to have actually noticed this at the time.

The trial is described in detail in the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Summer for the Gods, by Edward J. Larson (ISBN 0465075096); also useful is Ray Ginger's Six Days or Forever? (ISBN 0195197844). Another detailed resource is The Great Monkey Trial by L. Sprague de Camp. Although the play Inherit the Wind, written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, is very loosely based on the events, it is important to note that this was a "literary device" since many believe that the play was actually about Senator Joseph McCarthy and the proceedings of the notorious House Committee on Un-American Activities, which McCarthy was not associated with. See also ''The World's Most Famous Court Trial, State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes: Complete Stenographic Report of the Court, by John Scopes (ISBN 0306719754)

The trial also brought publicity to the town of Dayton, Tennessee, leading some to speculate that it was a publicity stunt. From The Salem Republican, June 11, 1925:

The trial did not stop the anti-evolution movement. Before Dayton only the South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Kentucky legislatures had dealt with anti-evolution laws or riders to educational appropriations bills. In 1927 there were 13 states, both North and South, that considered some form of anti-evolution law. At least 41 bills, riders, or resolutions were introduced into the state legislatures, with some states facing the issue repeatedly. While most of these efforts were rejected, both Mississippi and Arkansas put anti-evolution laws on the books after the Scopes trial. If Bryan had been alive to throw the magic of his name into the controversy these numbers may well have increased. The Butler Act ended up serving as a model for the anti-evolution crusade and the ACLU could not find a teacher to volunteer for another test case.

The site of the trial, the Rhea County Courthouse, has in recent years largely been restored to its 1925 appearance, and a museum of the trial events is located in its basement. Every summer the locals re-enact key moments of the trial in the courtroom.

Humor and the Scopes Trial

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 wow cross between the circus & the holy war." Life'' adorned its masthead with monkeys reading books and proclaimed "the whole matter is something to laugh astir." 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.

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-Loeb from the death penalty continued to be a source of ugly humor. Attacks on Bryan were predictably frequent and nasty: Life awarded him its "Brass Medal of the For Class," for having "by having success demonstrated per alchemy of ignorance hot air can be transmuted into gold, & that a Bible is infallibly elysian except in which it differs with him on the wonder of wine, women, & wealth." 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.

Inherit the Wind
Main article: Inherit the Wind

The stage play Inherit the Wind (1955) by Lawrence and Lee, later adapted into a film in 1960 by Stanley Kramer, was (very loosely) based on this trial. It was not intended to depict the trial accurately, but rather to decry the excesses of the Joseph McCarthy era in 1950s politics. It starred Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond/Darrow, Fredric March as Matthew Harrison Brady/Bryan and Gene Kelly as E. K. Hornbeck/Mencken. In 1965 the play aired on television with Melvyn Douglas as Drummond and Ed Begley as Brady. In 1988, a rewrite of the Kramer movie shown on NBC starred Jason Robards as Drummond and Kirk Douglas as Brady. Another version aired in 1999 with another pair of Oscar winners, Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott as Drummond and Brady. Playing the role of Drummond, Tracy was nominated for an Oscar, Robards won an Emmy, and Lemmon won a Golden Globe award. The 1988 production also won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama/Comedy Special. American schools' (sometimes exclusive) use of the film to teach about the trial has led to many public misconceptions about the subject.

There were a number of substantial deviations from actual events in the movie: Whereas Brady was portrayed as refusing to read Darwin, Bryan was better acquainted with Darwin's ideas than were the defense team lawyers, not to mention several of the so-called expert witnesses. (In the McCarthy hearings it was clear that the prosecutors had a poor understanding of Communism and its implications.) It has the Brady character ("Bryan") claiming that sexual intercourse was original sin, although nothing at all was said about sex during Darrow's examination of Bryan. (The McCarthy prosecutors accused some defendants of being anti-American simply for having had a boyfriend or girlfriend who was or had been a member of the Communist Party.) While the play had Brady betraying Cates' girlfriend, the local preacher's daughter, the real Scopes didn't have a girlfriend at all. (A major ploy by the McCarthy prosecutors was the promise that they would be more lenient to witnesses who named people who they knew were, or had been, members of the Communist Party.) In the play Brady protests that the fine is too lenient; in real life Bryan, as noted above, actually offered to pay the fine himself. (This is part of Brady's final rant in the film, which mirrors McCarthy's outburst when the Army-McCarthy Hearings were abandoned, but relates to nothing in the Scopes trial.) Brady dies, in the courtroom, almost as soon as the trial's outcome is decided; Bryan did not die until five days after the trial ended. It says much for the influence of Inherit the Wind that the Congressional biography of Bryan has him dying in the courtroom!

The Scopes trial did not appear in the Encyclopædia Britannica until 1957 when the 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. Most entries followed the trail of misinformation first laid in Only Yesterday, by F.L. Allen, subsequently echoed in Inherit the Wind, and focused on Darrow reducing Bryan to a figure of ridicule and several substituted the substance of the drama for the reality of the actual trial.