The Scopes Monkey Trial
To understand the trial, one must first understand the people and circumstances surrounding it. An important figure in this ordeal was John Thomas Scopes. His father immigrated to America from England in 1883 carrying a Bible and The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. He worked on Midwestern railroads and was a friend of leading Socialist Eugene Debs. He was agnostic and his only son and fifth child, John, would later follow in his footsteps [1].
John Scopes went to high school in Salem, Ill., where evolution was freely accepted and taught. He fully realized his agnosticism during his senior year while he attended a bible class. He figured that there should be some coherence between what a man does and what he preaches. He didn’t find this attitude in his teacher, who partied in Chicago on the weekends. Scopes was also disturbed by the fact that girls in his town were paid unreasonably low wages and that this, in many ways, might have a connection to the increase in prostitution in Salem. When he disclosed this information in class, he was kindly asked to seek out other churches. He didn’t.
Scopes attended the University of Illinois and then transferred to the University of Kentucky. He was taught Darwin’s theory there and figured it was a normal part of any science education. After graduating, he was offered a job teaching science and coaching sports in Dayton, Tenn., and became a well-liked member of the community [2].
During this time, a Dayton man named John Washington Butler had a conversation with a preacher who frequently visited the church that Butler attended. The preacher mentioned a young woman from the community who had left for college and came back believing in evolution and not God. This started the gears turning in Butler’s head. Suppose the same thing were to happen to his children? The thought did not sit well with Butler. And he knew that evolution was being taught in Rhea County public schools.
In 1922 Butler ran for state legislature and won. He and his campaign people decided that it was absolutely necessary to pass an anti-evolution bill. Butler, like many Christian fundamentalists at the time, believed in the literal translation of the Bible, and that any person or text that went against the Bible’s teachings was false. The Bible stated that since God made man in his image, it was impossible for man to evolve from lower creatures like scientists said [3].
Butler decided to wait until his second term as legislator to pass the bill because then he would have more credibility. So when he was reelected in 1924, he sat down and wrote a draft for the anti-evolution bill. The bill banned the teaching of evolution in all public schools and universities in Tennessee that were in any way funded by the state, and if any teacher violated this law, he or she would be fined somewhere between $100 and $500. Butler wrote the bill because he claimed that the American government was established with the Bible, and that evolution undermines the government [4].
Governor Austin Peay signed the bill on March 21, 1925. Peay said he passed the law because the Tennessee state constitution mentioned that if a man was to be judged after death, he must be judged by some set of laws, and these laws are listed in the Bible. He added that he couldn’t find anything of consequence being taught in the public schools’ textbooks which would interfere with the bill. He even said that he didn’t believe that the bill would ever be applied, and would probably never become an active statute [5].
In New York, the secretary for the American Civil Liberties Union found out about Peay signing the Butler Act in the newspaper. She brought this information to the attention of Roger Baldwin, the director of the ACLU. He had the idea of making a test case out of this evolution controversy. He immediately sent word to the country’s major newspapers about possible funding for his project [6].
George Rappleyea, in Dayton, read about the ACLU’s offer and wanted his town to host the test case. In addition to being opposed to the Butler Act, he thought that this was just the thing to put Dayton on the map. Rappleyea, manager and engineer of Cumberland Coal and Iron, presented his idea to the president of the Dayton school board, F. E. Robinson, and after much discussion, they both agreed that John Scopes was the perfect candidate for the test case. Scopes was young and without a family, so going through trial would not affect him in the long run. Plus, they knew that he was opposed to the Butler Act [7].
The three discussed the matter at Robinson’s Drugstore. Rappleyea’s proposal to Scopes went as follows:
“It’s a bad law. Let’s get rid of it. I will swear out a warrant and have you arrested…that will make a big sensation. Why not bring a lot of doctors and preachers here? Let’s get H.G. Wells and a lot of big fellows.” [8].
At first Scopes was hesitant to go along with the project. He didn’t want an arrest on his record. Rappleyea and Robinson reminded Scopes that he had already violated the law. The mild-mannered science teacher with adamant views on evolution agreed to go along with the test case [9].
So, in contrary to popular belief, the Scopes monkey trial, as it came to be called, was not one idealistic teacher’s quest to rid the world of anti-evolutionism, but rather a political experiment. Without the instigation of Roger Baldwin, George Rappleyea and F.E. Robinson, the Butler Act would have been ignored, just as it was in the years following the Scopes trial. While it seemed Scopes was being used as a pawn by Robinson, Rappleyea and the ACLU, the teacher did have strong feelings about anti-evolutionists and thought that the Butler Act was unjust. He acted purely as a result of his own feelings, and was not seeking fame.
Scopes traveled to New York to hear what the ACLU planned to do. There, he was instructed to choose a lawyer. He chose high-profile defense lawyer Clarence Darrow, who became well-known for choosing difficult cases, such as the Leopold and Loeb trial [10]. Darrow offered his services without fee; it was the only time that Darrow volunteered his services [11]. The defense also consisted of John R. Neal and Dudley Field Malone.
Scopes was arrested on May 7 and charged with teaching evolution to his classes on April 24. The sentence in Hunter’s Civic Biology, the textbook that Scopes taught from, that justified this charge was:
“We have now learned that animal forms may be arranged so as to begin with simple one-celled forms and culminate with a group which contains man himself” [12].
The proponents of the ACLU’s cause decided that the man to represent the prosecution should be none other than William Jennings Bryan, a staunch fundamentalist and rampant supporter of the Butler Act. Before the ACLU had a chance to contact him, Bryan announced that if the Tennessee officials agreed to it, he would be more than happy to defend Fundamental Christianity by prosecuting Scopes. Bryan had been a lawyer, but had not served on a case in thirty years. He was an infamous orator and was just the person Dayton needed to draw in the crowds. Robinson, Rappleyea and many Dayton merchants were delighted that Bryan had decided to prosecute. With a sensational trial comes visitors, and visitors bring much needed business. On top of helping the evolutionists’ cause, the Scopes trial would help the economy of the town [13].
Bryan was so adamant in destroying evolution because of his literal interpretation of the Bible. He thought that evolution disproved the notion of God, when in fact it was simply a scientific explanation of the creation of the earth [14]. What anti-evolutionists didn’t realize was that Christianity and evolution can in fact coexist, if one considers that the Bible is a symbolic summation of religion, not meant to be taken literally, and evolution is just a scientific theory.
Henry Louis Mencken covered the trial for the Baltimore Evening Sun. He reported the bias inherit in the Dayton court system, with regards to William Jennings Bryan as he was selecting the jury.
“Once a man was challenged without examination for simply admitting that he did not formally belong to any church. Another time a panel man who confessed that he was prejudiced against evolution got a hearty round of applause from the crowd” [15].
The trial began on Friday, July 10, 1925 and lasted for eight days. Presiding was Judge John T. Raulston. In the actual trial proceedings, Scopes stood in the background. In the foreground were the commanding personalities of Bryan and Darrow. Because of this, Scopes said he really didn’t feel any personal involvement in the trial itself. All he had to do was be present, and Bryan and Darrow would run the course of the trial. Scopes declared himself not guilty, claiming that the Butler Act was unconstitutional, although he did admit to teaching evolution. His defense was a matter of law, not fact, so he never testified. His students, however, did testify that Scopes had taught them evolution. On the fourth day, two students in particular were called as witnesses and told to recite out of their biology book what Scopes had taught them [16].
For the first two days, before the court could proceed, a reverend said a prayer. On the third day, Darrow objected to the prayer, stating that since the trial was one of science versus religion, an opening prayer might influence the jury. The judge overruled the objection, and opening prayers continued until the last day.
The defense called in many expert witnesses, namely, scientists, who tried to persuade the all white male jury that evolution could explain a great deal about the origins of the earth and of man. One such witness, Dr. Fay-Cooper Cole, an anthropologist at the University of Chicago, used such evidence as the striking similarities between certain bones and muscles found in both humans and animals. He also brought to attention the discovery of many fossilized skeletons of primitive humans, which would suggest evolution [17].
On the side of the prosecution, Bryan spent much of his time preaching to the converted, that is, telling a jury whom he had approved of, that evolution contradicted religion. He deduced that evolution is not a science, because it can’t be proven. Evolution contradicts the Bible because it has no authority, and the Bible has the greatest authority, God, making it right, and therefore, making evolution wrong [18].
On July 21, in the case The State of Tennessee vs. John Thomas Scopes, the defendant was found guilty, and was fined $100.
The defense failed because of the complexities of the Tennessee legal system. Judge Raulston said if the jury found the defendant guilty and were content with the $100 fine they could let the court punish him. Attorney General Stewart then rose and addressed the court, and said it should be the jury’s decision to fix the fee. Judge Raulston replied that the court can always impose a minimum fine under a statute, and then went on to compare the Scopes trial with many others he presided over in which he always set the fee at $100. The attorney general, coming upon a realization, sat down silently [19].
When the case reached the Supreme Court of Tennessee in January of 1927, the court then reversed the judgement of the circuit court because Judge Raulston had made a technical error. He had imposed a fine greater than $50 without having that amount determined by the jury. The attorney general had tried to stop the judge from committing that error when he addressed the court. As the judge rambled on, Attorney General Stewart realized that if the trial went to the Supreme Court, this technical error would make it unnecessary for the higher court to label the Butler Act was unconstitutional, as he expected it to. Because of the judge’s error, the case was sent back to the lower court for retrial, and simultaneously it was indicated that trying it again would be useless [20].
For 40 more years, the anti-evolution law was still around, but was largely ignored. Then, in 1968, after the Epperson vs. Arkansas trial, the Supreme Court stated that it was unconstitutional for a school, state, or district to ban the teaching of evolution, even if it offends the proponents of a religion: “…the state has no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to them” [21].
After the trial, John Scopes received a scholarship from the University of Chicago, and he went back to school; he knew that teaching in Dayton would never be the same again, so he studied to become a geologist. He didn’t even need to attend the Supreme Court trial; he just wanted to put it all behind him [22].
The famous play Inherit the Wind is based on the Scopes trial. Many elements are similar: For example, the main characters and the theme and end of the play. Although the defendant in the play is found guilty and fined $100, Bertram Cates, like John Scopes, decidedly wins [23]. Maybe Scopes didn’t win that day in the courthouse, but his participation in abolishing an unconstitutional law was made infamous, and today students and teachers alike have the freedom of learning and teaching evolution. In the end, all matters of importance, like the Scopes trial, are about something greater than what they are initially representing.
