Scopes Trial

Background

In the 1920s, American Protestantism was divided between the fundamentalist camp, which sought to preserve traditional doctrine and the literal authority of the Bible, and a camp that embraced modern scholarship and sought to reinterpret the faith in its light. This conflict is known as the Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy. The teaching of evolution (the scientific theory that living things have changed over long periods of time) in public schools was one of its central issues. Fundamentalist Christians regarded evolution as a direct challenge to the creation account in the Bible (Genesis).

In March 1925 the Tennessee General Assembly passed the Butler Act. The law prohibited public schools from teaching any theory that denied the biblical account of the creation of man or that taught that man had descended from a lower order of animals. Violation was a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of $100 to $500. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), seeking to test the law's constitutionality in court, placed newspaper advertisements offering to provide legal defense and cover the costs for any teacher willing to challenge it.

Course of Events

• May 1925: Civic leaders in Dayton, seeing an opportunity to publicize their town, responded to the offer. They put forward 24-year-old teacher John T. Scopes as the defendant. Scopes taught mathematics and general science, coached football, and had once substituted for the biology teacher. The state-adopted textbook, Hunter's A Civic Biology, included material on evolution. Scopes himself, however, reportedly could not remember for certain whether he had actually taught evolution.
• July 10, 1925: The trial began. The prosecution included William Jennings Bryan, a three-time presidential candidate and former secretary of state. The defense was led by the renowned criminal defense attorney Clarence Darrow. Reporters converged on the town from across the country, and the name "Monkey Trial," coined by journalist H. L. Mencken, gained wide currency at this time.
• Judge John Raulston rejected the argument that the Butler Act was unconstitutional. He also refused to allow expert testimony before the jury from scientists and religious figures who intended to testify that evolution and faith could coexist. The issue was thus narrowed to the single question of whether Scopes had taught evolution.
• Seventh day of the trial: Because of the heat, the proceedings were moved outdoors. Darrow called Bryan to the stand as an expert on the Bible and questioned him for about two hours on the literal interpretation of Scripture. The judge later struck this testimony from the record.
• July 21: Darrow asked the jury to return a guilty verdict so that the case could be appealed to a higher court. The jury found Scopes guilty after nine minutes, and the judge imposed the statutory minimum fine of $100. As a result, Bryan never delivered the closing argument he had prepared.
• July 26: Five days after the trial ended, Bryan died in his sleep.

Outcome and Impact

In January 1927 the Tennessee Supreme Court, with one justice dissenting, upheld the Butler Act as constitutional, reasoning that the state, as employer, could determine what its teachers taught. At the same time, it overturned the conviction, citing a provision of the state constitution requiring that fines exceeding $50 be set by a jury. Because prosecutors did not retry the case, it never reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Butler Act was never enforced again and was repealed by the state legislature in May 1967. After the trial, several publishers removed material on evolution from their biology textbooks. The ACLU states that in the two years following the trial, anti-evolution bills failed to pass in 22 states. In 1968 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a similar Arkansas law violated the First Amendment.

Assessment

• Bryan's side and the law's supporters held that determining the content of public education was a legitimate power of the state. They also argued that the law protected traditional values from the moral relativism of modern science.
• The defense argued that making the Bible, the text of a particular religion, the standard of truth in public schools violated the separation of church and state and freedom of expression.
• The press of the time reported the exchange between Darrow and Bryan as a defeat for Bryan. Darrow, for his part, has also been criticized for treating religion with cynicism. Some assessments hold that both sides gained something: the prosecution won in court, but evolution received national attention.
• Among the experts the defense intended to call were religious figures who believed that evolution and faith could coexist, showing that Christians themselves were divided on the issue.

The trial inspired the play and film Inherit the Wind. It is still frequently cited today as a symbolic event in the creation–evolution debate.