The so-called "Scopes Monkey Trial" began July 10, 1925, in Dayton, Tennessee, when high school biology teacher John T. Scopes (1900-70), faced court proceedings on the charge of having taught evolution in violation of the Butler Act. The trial was originally conceived as a publicity stunt in order to promote business in Dayton, and many local residents profited personally by simply leaving town for the summer and renting out their houses to the droves of visitors and reporters who descended upon their small town.
Law vs. Public Relations
What many people today don't know or simply forget is the fact that the Scopes Monkey Trial was a manufactured case. From the very beginning it was designed to attract widespread attention, notoriety, and publicity in order to provide an economic boost to the local economy. It also had all of the right elements for a famous case, mixing a clash of science against religion along with a clash of strong personalities in form of Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan.
One of Scopes' lawyers was the famous agnostic and criminal defense attorney Clarence Darrow, and one of the prosecuting attorneys was the famous populist politician and fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan. Scopes himself volunteered to be the "sacrificial lamb" of the trial and knew what he was doing the entire time. He was also the perfect defendant because he was single, relaxed, and had no intentions of remaining in Dayton after the trial where lingering hard feelings might poison his social standing. Thus, he had little to lose while the town had much to gain.
John Scopes Broke the Law
The following is a quote of the judge's instructions to the jury:
Gentlemen of the grand jury, on May 25, 1925, John T. Scopes was indicted in this county for violating what is generally known as the anti-evolution statute. There is some uncertainty as to whether or not this indictment is valid, and, in order to avoid a possibility of it being invalid. I have determined to convene this grand jury for the purpose of reinvestigating these charges, I now use substantially the same charge I gave the first grand jury.
The statute, which it is alleged the said Scopes violated, is Chapter 27 of the acts of 1925, which makes it unlawful to teach in 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, any theory that denies the story of Divine creation of man as taught in the Bible and teach instead theory that man descended from a lower order of animals. This act became the law in Tennessee on March 21, 1925.
The defense did not argue that Scopes was innocent of violating the law - instead, they argued that evolution was valid, that it was compatible with certain interpretations of the Bible, and hence that the original law itself was wrong. It was also argued that the statute prohibiting the teaching of evolution violated Tennessee state law because it enforced a particular religious viewpoint (Darrow could not make an argument based upon the US Constitution because the Supreme Court had not yet ruled that the Establishment Clause applied to the states).
Putting Religion & Fundamentalism on Trial
A famous highlight of the case was when Clarence Darrow called William Jennings Bryan himself to the stand as a hostile witness. It is highly unusual for a prosecuting attorney to be called by the defense as a witness, but Bryan accepted out of a desire to get his message across and directly refute Darrow's position. In the end, it was Darrow who achieved those goals for himself.
Darrow was a master at cross-examination and through a series of quick, direct questions he got Bryan to admit that the Bible needed to be interpreted metaphorically in many places, for example admitting that the world was far older than 6,000 years (Bryan was never the literalist that many fundamentalists were, a shock to his supporters) and to admit ignorance about evolutionary theory. Indeed, Bryan had to admit ignorance on quite a few matters, disappointing fundamentalists as he repeatedly gave ground to Darrow.
None of that mattered for the actual case, however, and the Dayton court rejected the arguments of the defense, refusing even to rule in many matters. In the end, the judge stuck strictly to whether or not the law was violated and found Scopes guilty, fining him $100. The state supreme court later reversed this judgment on a technicality, but Scopes and the trial were already famous around the country. Scopes himself went on to study geology at the University of Chicago and became a petroleum engineer, never seeking to capitalize on his fame in any fashion.
Scopes in the Court of Public Opinion
The Scopes Monkey Trial was a true media circus, with reporters from all over the world sending reports back home. However, even though the reporters found the case interesting enough to send daily reports back home about every event that occurred every day of the trial, ultimately many said that it wasn't such a big deal after all because the final decision was, well, indecisive - Scopes was found guilty of violating the law, but no decision was reached on the more profound issues like the validity of evolution or whether anti-evolution laws promoted a particular religious viewpoint. That, after all, is what people were really hoping for.
Once free of the constraints of court procedures and away from Darrow's questions, Bryan was again able to take his case for fundamentalist Christianity and against evolution directly to the people, giving a series of speeches in which he made his case and ignored the flaws revealed during the trial. He planned on mounting an expanded crusade against evolution, getting anti-evolution laws passed in more and more states around the country. Just a few days after the trial, however, Bryan was dead - and many blamed Darrow personally for driving Bryan to his grave, an accusation which Darrow accepted with some glee.
