John Thomas Scopes was playing tennis one day this month 80 years ago. Businessmen of Dayton, Tenn., asked the young biology teacher to come Robinson’s Drugstore to discuss being a pawn in a chess game that seemed to involve more than one king.
It was called “The Monkey Trial” because the case was testing three lines of text in the new Butler act, which made it illegal to teach evolutionary theory in public schools, universities and normal schools. However, the name also fits the trial, as it was described as a media circus.
The major players in the trial include the great orators Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan. One of the instigators was the fledgling America Civil Liberties Union, who wanted to challenge the new law in court.
The 15-day trial attracted hundreds and many more over the airwaves. It was the first ever radio broadcast of a trial in American history.
Scopes was convicted and fined $100, quite a sum in 1925. He was later acquitted on a technicality.
However, the law withstood and remained in effect for almost 40 more years.
Dr. Gary Voekler, assistant professor in biology believes evolution is a fact based on the evidence supporting it.
Still, with 80 additional years of research, some still do not believe in the evolutionary theory.
“There are people who still refuse to believe what they see,” said Voekler.
If it were 1925, Voekler would be in Scopes and Darrow’s corner.
What can today’s society take away from this trial?
Barbara Kritchevsky, associate dean of the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law was hard pressed to find a reason why the trial is famous.
“It’s just a good example of how a social political debate gets played out in a trial,” she said.
However, just last week Rhea County held a reenactment of the trial, along with a three-day festival in honor of the “Trial of the Century.”
Dr. Douglas Cupples, instructor of history, said he has heard that the trial was a plan to bring tourism to Dayton. What better than highly regarded orators and the first radio broadcast of a trial to do it.
“I’ve met people from Dayton and they are embarrassed because of the association with the Scopes trial,” said Cupples.
There are very few who know the subject of the Scopes trial better than Dr. Edward Larson, chair of law and history professor at the University of Georgia. Larson won a Pulitzer Prize for “Summer of the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion” in 1997.
He said the trial benefited from the time of the event and people who were involved.
“Most of all, however, the trial pitted two celebrities against each other, William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, and came at the time of celebrity journalism. Then there was a great play and movie made about the trial, ‘Inherit the Wind,’” Larson said.
“Beyond giving visibility to the issue generally, especially among conservative Protestants, I doubt if the trial has much direct impact today. Certainly the legal decision to uphold the law and convict Scopes does not have any legal effect today as precedent,” Larson said.
