The Scopes trial, formally The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was an American legal case from July 10 to July 21, 1925, in which a high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee’s Butler Act, which had made it illegal for teachers to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it was held.
Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he incriminated himself deliberately so the case could have a defendant. Scopes was found guilty and was fined $100 (equivalent to $1,700 in 2023), but the verdict was overturned on a technicality. The trial served its purpose of drawing intense national publicity, as national reporters flocked to Dayton to cover the high-profile lawyers who had agreed to represent each side.
William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate and former secretary of state, argued for the prosecution, while Clarence Darrow served as the defense attorney for Scopes. The trial publicized the fundamentalist–modernist controversy, which set modernists, who said evolution could be consistent with religion, against fundamentalists, who said the word of God as revealed in the Bible took priority over all human knowledge.
The case was thus seen both as a theological contest and as a trial on whether evolution should be taught in schools.
Bryan chastised evolution for teaching children that humans were but one of 35,000 types of mammals and bemoaned the notion that human beings were descended “Not even from American monkeys, but from old world monkeys”.
He wasn’t always like that. In the 1890s and 1900s he was a dominant force in American politics, representing labor and progressive interests. He was the guy who did the “cross of gold” speech about how the gold standard required the sacrifice of the American working class to function. He ended up being Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of state and was instrumental in getting America out of the Philippines.
He lost his marbles sometime in the 1920s and became like a travelling Biblical literalist. Some historians think he became cynical in his elderly years and only cared about stirring controversy to make money
Everything old is new again. The Scopes Monkey Trial was in 1925.
I used to rock this as a t-shirt in 2006-7
This guy was almost president
What a deeply unserious person.
He wasn’t always like that. In the 1890s and 1900s he was a dominant force in American politics, representing labor and progressive interests. He was the guy who did the “cross of gold” speech about how the gold standard required the sacrifice of the American working class to function. He ended up being Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of state and was instrumental in getting America out of the Philippines.
He lost his marbles sometime in the 1920s and became like a travelling Biblical literalist. Some historians think he became cynical in his elderly years and only cared about stirring controversy to make money