The Man, the Myth, the Monkey: The Scopes Trial at 100

If you were 20 years old in Canton in 1925, your life would have been a lot different.

You would have had fewer than 2,000 neighbors (whereas the population now is almost 100,000). You probably lived on a wheat or sweet corn farm, got around on foot or by horse and buggy, and kept your food cool with ice cut from the river and stored in an ice house.

If you were lucky, you might have had one of the early tractors—Henry Ford and others had started making cars, but the River Rouge plant wouldn’t be completed for another three years. You survived the influenza. Your older brothers, fathers and uncles almost certainly fought in the Great War and only recently came home; your grandfather probably fought in the Civil War.

When you were younger, you might have gone to a one-room schoolhouse, but probably only up to 8th grade. You also might not have gone to school at all (only 60% of kids did, so it wasn’t unusual not to). There was a relatively new fad for high schools, so you’d probably heard of them, but the closest one was in Detroit. You could have commuted with a 5-cent ticket for the interurban trolley down Michigan Avenue, but you probably didn’t.

One thing for sure is that, in the summer of 1925, you would have seen coverage of the Scopes “Monkey” Trial. It was front-page news, talked about on the radio and from the pulpit in local churches.

Bible class was a regular part of school in those days, but so was science, and—like now—there were state-approved lists of texts for use in school.

John Scopes was a high school teacher in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925. He regularly taught from the state-approved science textbook, which included a passage on evolution, but that year the state passed an act that barred the teaching of evolution, citing conflict with the biblical book of Genesis.

The newly-formed American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced in response that they would finance a challenge on grounds of freedom of speech. A group of Dayton businessmen saw an opportunity to get press for their town, recruited Scopes to act as defendant and took the ACLU up on their offer.

In the 1920s, movie theatres and radio programs were big, and so were public lectures and debates. It may sound boring now, but these were hot ticket events and hundreds, if not thousands, of people attended. The Chautauqua lecture series (which is still ongoing) and Lyceum Circuit hosted everyone from P. T. Barnum (of circus fame) to Abe Lincoln.

In 1925, a courtroom trial on a flashy topic, featuring famous speakers, was a major event.

So what actually happened?

• Scopes thought it would be a lark to be a defendant on his summer vacation. He couldn’t remember for sure if he’d actually taught evolution, but the others involved in coordinating the trial convinced some local high school students to testify that he had.
• The ACLU, which hadn’t yet won a case, wanted a popular, well-loved speaker for the defense attorney. They got a big name in Clarence Darrow, but not a well-loved one. At the time, he was most famous for his last big “trial of the century” the year before, in which he had defended murderers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb.
• William Jennings Bryan was nominated three times for president by the Democratic Party. He supported women's suffrage, championed the rights of farmers and believed passionately in majority rule—and he stepped in to make the state’s case against evolution.
• People packed the courtroom. Out of fear that the floor would break under the weight, a stage was set outside for final arguments. In a surprise twist, Darrow called Bryan to the stand.
• It didn’t happen exactly like Inherit the Wind, but Darrow and Bryan had an extended debate that pitted evolution against fundamentalism, majoritarianism against protection of minorities, and freedom of speech against the rights of the state.
• Ultimately, the judge ruled against Scopes. The ruling was later overturned on a procedural question (the judge had set the amount of the fine when the jury should have), which meant it could not be appealed. In the popular press, both sides were depicted as having “won”—and started a schism that continues today, with Christian fundamentalism on one side and mainstream science on the other. The statute itself was not overturned until 1970.

Before the trial, the theory of evolution was relatively well-known. There were multiple ways in which science-educated Christians had reconciled evolution with the Bible, such as the gap theory and day-age theory, and many Christian preachers referenced these theories in their sermons. Modern fundamentalism was new in the early 1900s.

The Scopes case, and later coverage of it, helped to lock in a stereotype of fundamentalism and of the backwards South that persists today—even though, at the time, fundamentalism was more prevalent in the North and West, and Dayton’s interest in the trial was primarily to attract tourists.

One longstanding legacy of the trial is that evolution is taught in the United States as theory rather than as fact, and the rise of fundamentalist colleges, charter and homeschools.

Because Dayton's goal was to draw crowds, the town created a carnival-like atmosphere around the original trial. There were concerts, street stalls and dances. Hawkers sold little monkey replicas, the Dayton Hotel had a gorilla display, and one enterprising fellow even brought a trained chimpanzee in a plaid suit, playing off the connection to Darwinism.

To this day, Dayton hosts a Scopes Festival and re-enactment of the trial every July and has larger-than-life statues of Bryan and Darrow on its courthouse lawn.

For more insight into the Scopes trial, how it came about and its continuing legacy, check Summer for the Gods by Edward J. Larson. Larson also wrote Evolution, which traces the history of the theory.