July 18, 2020 • 33 mins
This 2017 episode covered the Scopes Trial, aka the Monkey Trial, that played out in Dayton, Tennessee in the summer of 1925. It all stemmed from a state law prohibiting the teaching of evolution.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday, everybody. We are coming up on the ninety
five anniversary of the verdict in State of Tessee versus
John Thomas Scopes, also just the Scopes Monkey Trial, so
that seemed like a good time to share our previous
episode on the trial, which originally came out on. One
correction that we got after this episode originally aired is
(00:24):
that the drug store owner and school board president who
played a big role in all of this was Frank E. Robinson.
We incorrectly said his name was Fred. That is an
error that appeared in one of the books Tracy used
for research, Edward Larsen's book Summer of the Gods, and
it's been reproduced as well in a lot of other places.
So thanks to listener Kay for writing to us about
(00:45):
that way back in the day so we can fix
it here at least in the intro. Yeah, Okay was
actually the person that that pointed out that that seems
to be the origin of that particular widely reproduced error. Oh.
We also mentioned at the end of this episode and
any well, Scopes festival organizers had been planning to do
a modified festival this year, focusing just on the outdoor
(01:07):
events and in including social distancing, but ultimately they have
had to cancel due to the ongoing COVID nineteen pandemic.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
(01:28):
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Today we
are going to talk about the Scopes Trial also known
as the Monkey Trial, so known as the Scopes Monkey Trial,
which played out in Dayton, Tennessee, in the summer of
I learned last night from a dear friend of mine
who grew up in Tennessee that they cover this in
(01:50):
Tennessee History Class. Cool. So if you grew up in Tennessee,
or maybe if you've studied law, you might already know
a lot of these details. But a lot of what
most folk know in quotation marks about this trial really
comes from Inherit the Wind, which started as a play
in nineteen fifty five and was adapted into a film
in nineteen sixty. And even if you have never personally
(02:12):
seen Inherit the Wind, which was conceived more as an
allegory for McCarthy ism than an actual portrayal of the
Scopes Trial, it does not even use the same names
or location. A lot of conventional wisdom about the trial
and its personalities and how it played out really have
much deeper roots in inherent the wind than in actual history.
(02:34):
I won't out them by name, but I have a
friend who I mentioned yesterday that we're doing this, and
their reaction was, wait, is that one about slavery? It's like, oh, no,
it's super nice. So there's no shame in having you know,
blind spots in your historical knowledge. Tickled me. And it's
(02:54):
a very smart person. But we all have them, those
weird blind spots. Uh and true. So will now clear
it up, and that person will know all the things
about about slavery at all. No. So. The State of
Tennessee versus John Thomas Scopes was the United States first
major legal battle over the teaching of evolution. Charles Darwin
(03:16):
had published On the Origin of Species by Means of
Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the
Struggle for Life back in eighteen fifty nine, and Darwin
did not invent the idea of evolution. The basic idea
that species change and shift over time goes back millennia
in multiple cultures, but the book itself was hugely influential
(03:37):
and very controversial. By the nineteen teens and twenties, though
Darwin's writings were well established, they were generally accepted in
the field of biology, and as part of a general
trend of progressive educational reform, they also started to be
incorporated into school curricula and the United States teachers were
beginning to unionize, and the National Education Association had recommended
(04:00):
that states try to align their standards for education nationally.
And with this overall trend in standardization, more and more
states were making science a mandatory school requirement, and more
and more science textbooks were addressing evolution. For example, William
Hunter's A Civic Biology Presented in Problems, which was published
(04:22):
in nineteen fourteen, was the approved biology textbook in the
state of Tennessee in nine Like other civic biology texts
of the time, it framed biology in terms of its
practical applicability to other parts of life, like hygiene and
wellness and food safety. Hunter's book included evolution in chapter fourteen,
(04:43):
quote division of labor, the various forms of plants and animals,
and part of that chapter reads the great English scientists
Charles Darwin. From this and other evidence explained the theory
of evolution. This is the belief that simple forms of
life on Earth slowly and gradually gave rise to those
more complex, and that thus ultimately the most complex forms
(05:05):
came into existence. Running parallel to this progressive shift and
educational standards and the inclusion of evolution in science textbooks,
was a rise in religious fundamentalism, particularly Christian fundamentalism. The
term fundamentalism itself was coined in the nineteen twenties, signifying
(05:25):
a strict adherence to certain fundamental concepts of Christian faith
and in some cases interpreting the Bible literally rather than figuratively.
And when it came to evolutionary theory, some Christians, particularly
fundamentalist Christians, objected to the idea that humans came from
monkeys and to the idea that something other than a
(05:46):
divine hand could be credited for life on earth, And
if the Bible was the literal word of God, then
the writings of Charles Darwin and other evolutionary biologists were
directly contradictory to the creation story in the book Genesis. Obviously,
other religions and other nations had their own views on
evolution and whether it should be taught, but Christianity in
(06:08):
the United States is what is relevant to the Scopes trial. Also,
for the sake of clarity, this whole humans came from
Monkey's idea. It's one that a lot of people took
away from the Origin of species and from all the
conversations that followed its publication. But the Origin of species
only very briefly and vaguely alludes to the origins of humankind.
(06:30):
There is nothing in its saying humans came from monkeys.
Darwin's second book, The Descent of Man, came out in
eighteen seventy one, and it is about theories of human origins,
and it's basic conclusion is that quote man is descended
from some less highly organized form. Darwin describes the less
organized form as some ancient, unknown ancestor that does have
(06:53):
some monkey like traits, but it is not a modern monkey. Today,
the scientific consensus is that both humans and monkeys descended
from an ancestor that lived millions of years ago, not
that one came from another. Essentially, two branches of a tree, yes,
a very large and very complex tree. Yes. Yes, yes,
it's not like they each branch off from one spot.
(07:14):
It's there. Yeah, we talked about this in our Pilled
Down Man episode if you are looking for a little
more of that piece of history. So, in the face
of this ongoing conflict between scientific acceptance of evolution and
religious rejection of it, multiple states began considering laws to
(07:36):
ban its teaching. On its face, this was a religious issue.
The idea that children might go to school and come
home questioning their faith was frightening and infuriating too many parents,
especially given that public schools were funded through taxes they
were paying. People were basically like, I want my kid
to go to the school I'm paying for and then
(07:57):
come home and say they don't believe in God anymore.
But it was also a general resistance to the overall
trend of establishing state and national education standards. Many parents
in rural counties didn't like the idea of far away
legislatures in their state capitals or Washington, d c. Setting
rules about what their children would learn while having no
idea what their wishes or needs were. Passing laws against
(08:20):
the teaching of evolution was a way to gain a
sense of control over what children were being taught. In
the face of all these changes to the educational system,
Although Florida and Oklahoma passed laws that were connected to
this basic issue in nineteen twenty three. It was Tennessee
that became the first states who explicitly forbid the teaching
(08:40):
of evolution. In nineteen Representative John W. Butler introduced what
became known as the Butler Act on January twenty one
of that year. He had been interested in introducing similar
legislation as far back as nineteen twenty one, after hearing
a sermon about a young woman who had gone to
college and come home believing in evolution but not in God.
(09:03):
Once Butler had introduced the Act, there was some legislative
back and forth, but ultimately it passed both the Tennessee
House and Senate with overwhelming support. Tennessee's Governor Austin p
signed it into law on March twenty one, after putting
it off until the last possible day and at one
point telling a senator that he thought the bill was absurd. P,
(09:26):
who was in his second term as governor, had already
instituted a number of progressive reforms within the state. He
was at that point trying to pass a massive school
reform bill that would do things like build high schools
in rural counties that didn't have them length in the
school year and make education compulsory. It's possible that p
finally signed the Butler Act in exchange for Congressional support
(09:48):
for his massive school reform bill, or that he recognized
that this bill and the reforms that it was instituting
would face some resistance in rural parts of Tennessee, so
he felt like the Butler would assuage some people's fears
over what he was wanting to do. Even when he
signed it, though he said it was mostly symbolic and
that he did not expect anyone to be charged with
(10:11):
violating it. The Butler Act made it illegal for any
teacher in Tennessee funded schools and universities to quote teach
any theory that denies the story of the divine creation
of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach
instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.
It also established a fine of one hundred to five
hundred dollars, and the Act didn't really offer insight on
(10:34):
what to do about the fact that the state approved
biology textbook laid out the basic concepts of evolution in
chapter fourteen. This all brings us to the Scopes trial,
in which Tennessee teacher John Thomas Scopes was charged with
teaching evolution in defiance of the Butler Act. He was
convicted in a highly publicized trial that played out in
a pretty circus like atmosphere, and it had a lot
(10:56):
of famous names in the legal teams on both sides.
But the whole thing came about in a way that's
significantly different from what people might imagine. We will have
some details after the break. Although local attorneys were also
(11:19):
part of it, the Scopes trial involved a hugely high
profile cast of characters from out of town. There was
defense attorney Clarence Darrow, originally from Ohio, who was one
of America's most famous attorneys. He had represented Eugene V.
Debs after the massive Pullman strike of eight. He'd also
(11:39):
defended Leopold and Loebe and they're highly publicized murder trial.
He's usually credited with getting them a life murder sentence
instead of being executed. And the team on for the
defense also included Arthur Garfield Haze of New York, who
was the a c l used General counsel. The man
arguing for the prosecution, William Jennings Bryan the Great Commoner
(11:59):
was generally from Illinois. He had run for president three
times and served as Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson.
In the years leading up to the trial, he had
also become one of the most prominent anti evolution figures
in the nation, giving speeches with names like the Bible
and its Enemies and the Menace of Darwinism. Hl Mankin,
who wrote some of the most famous and most memorable
(12:21):
coverage of the trial, was from Baltimore, Maryland, and his
coverage ran in the Baltimore Sun. Meanwhile, Dayton, Tennessee, originally
founded as Smith's Crossroads, was a town of less than
eighteen hundred people situated roughly between Chattanooga and Knoxville and
the Tennessee River Valley. In the late nineteenth century, it
had become home to the Dayton Iron and Coal Company, which,
(12:43):
along with the railroad, had become the town's major employer.
But by the nineteen teams the blast furnace had shut down,
leaving farming as the now struggling town's major industry. So
between all the big names and the struggling small town,
it's easy to imagine that this was a case of
a bunch of high salutant city folk blustering in uninvited
(13:04):
to run rough shot over everybody and basically have a giant, public,
unwanted fight. But this was not the case at all,
as still happens today when a newly passed law seems
to run contrary to the Constitution or civil liberties. The
Butler Act immediately caught the attention of the American Civil
Liberties Union. The a c l U publicly offered to
(13:25):
defend any teacher charged with its violation. An advertisement announcing
that the a c l U was seeking a test
case ran in a Chattanooga newspaper on May four. This
advertisement came to the attention of a group of Dayton's
community and civic leaders. Fred E. Robinson's drug store had
become the site of regular meetings that included school superintendent
(13:48):
Walter White, attorneys Herbert and Sue Hicks, Cumberland Cole and
Iron Company manager George Washington Rapilier, and Robinson himself, who
was also the school board president. Some of them did
care about the teaching of evolution as a matter of principle,
but they were far more interested in the community of Dayton.
(14:08):
They thought a great, big trial would bring a lot
of much needed attention and tourism dollars to the town
rapil A, which may also have been rapili A. Documents
spell his name too different ways. Is usually the person
who's credited with convincing them all to go along with
this plan. To get the ball rolling, they just needed
a teacher, and the teacher in question was John Thomas Scopes,
(14:32):
who was then twenty four. Scopes had graduated from the
University of Kentucky the year before, and he was working
at the newly opened Ray County High School teaching algebra
and physics, coaching football, and sometimes substituting in biology. Dayton's
civic leaders thought Scopes would be a good candidate for
this scheme because he was well liked around town, he
(14:53):
was not viewed as some kind of radical, and he
didn't have a family whose livelihood would be threatened if
he did lose his job. Although they hoped it wouldn't
come to that. Scopes wasn't particularly eager to be arrested,
but he agreed to go along with this. He did
not agree with the Butler Act. He did not think
it was possible to teach biology without also teaching evolution.
(15:15):
And he didn't think that evolution was incompatible with religious faith.
Scopes had even already at least supposedly done the necessary
teaching of evolution. The prior April, he had done an
exam review out of the state approved biology textbook. Although
he couldn't remember specifically, he thought probably he'd gone over
the chapter that included evolution. According to some accounts, he
(15:38):
later said that he had not, but in any case,
he was arrested for violating the Butler Act on May seven,
and he was indicted on May twenty five. The town
of Dayton then began to prepare for what it hoped
would be an onslaught of visitors from late May until
early July. The town built a tourist camp to provide
(15:58):
additional housing. It also added a number of improvements to
the courthouse, including an outdoor speakers platform with benches and
loud speakers to handle an overflow crowd. To make the
courtroom more hospitable to reporters and their work. It also
added camera platforms, radio microphones, and telephone and telegraph lines.
But it wasn't just about accommodating lots of visitors or
(16:20):
making the courthouse more accessible to the news media. Dayton
also essentially turned part of its main road into a
festival grounds, complete with vendors and stalls. A scopes trial
Entertainment committee was formed. The Constable's motorcycle got a new label. Monkeyville.
Police businesses hung pictures of apes and monkeys in their windows.
(16:43):
A clothier who happened to be named j. R. Darwin
made the most of it with signs like Darwin is
right inside and Darwin's Big Sale. A whole lot of
store suddenly started stocking plush monkeys. Fred Robinson, who's uh
drug store had been the site of the first conversation
(17:03):
about hatching this plot, Fred Robinson started serving Simion SODA's
at the drug store. He strung a giant banner across
the street reading Robinson's drug Store with where it started
in smaller letters. Underneath. There were also photo ops at
the table where that initial conversation had taken place. A
chimpanzee named Joe Mendy, dressed in a plaid suit and
(17:24):
bow tie, who was one of multiple chimpanzees brought into
town for this was there to greet his customers when
they came into the store. And in addition to all
the business involvement in the overall carnival atmosphere where a
tinerant evangelists who came to town to preach about the
evils of evolution and the rightness of banning it from school.
(17:45):
Another banner was strung outside the courthouse that read, read
your Bible, Bible in all caps. Of course, in theory,
all of this big monkey festival was going on because
of a trial li in court, which we were going
to talk about after another quick sponsor break. Jury's selection
(18:14):
in the Scopes trial began on July. On that same day,
the Judge John T. Ralston took the precaution of impaneling
a second grand jury to reindicte John Scopes. People had
been so worried that some other town was going to
have this same idea and hatch the same plan that
the first indictment had been rushed through, and the judge
(18:37):
was worried that it was invalid. Actual trial proceedings were
put off until the following Monday to allow time for
the radio hookups that had been installed in the courtroom
to actually be connected for broadcasts. The Scopes trial would
be the first trial to be publicly broadcast nationwide, and
it was also filmed for newsreels that were distributed to
(18:57):
movie theaters. The defense and the prosecution each had a
completely different focus for this trial. From the prosecution's point
of view, it was really simple. They would establish that
John Thomas Scopes violated the Butler Act, which was state law,
by teaching evolution in a public school, and they would
establish that the state of Tennessee had the right to
(19:18):
set its own standards for the public school curriculum. The
defense's most practical focus was whether the Act itself was enforceable,
whether it's definition of evolution was precise enough, and whether
a teacher had to both deny the story of divine
creation and teach that man had descended from lower animals
to be in violation of the law. But beyond that,
(19:40):
it was looking at much broader issues than the defense
was like establishing whether the Butler Act was religiously motivated
and the evolution was scientifically sound. Let's focus on religion,
and this angle of religion versus science was really coming
from Clarence Darrow, who was a very vocal agnostic. The
A c. L U would was reluctant to have Darrow
(20:01):
involved in this at all. Viewed the Butler Act primarily
as an act on the freedom of speech, not on
the freedom of religion. This was in part because the
Supreme Court had previously ruled that the free speech clauses
of the First Amendment applied to state governments as well
as to the federal government. It had not yet made
such a ruling related to the freedom of religion, and
(20:24):
that wouldn't happen for several more decades. So basically, the
a c. L U was really looking at this as
a speech issue, and Clarence Darrow was in his own
little world focusing on the religious aspect. Once the trial began,
about a thousand people tried to cram into the courtroom,
which could hold about six hundred, and that happened every day.
(20:45):
The rest listened from benches outside the courthouse. The courtroom
was incredibly tight and incredibly hot, since the giant crush
of people blocked the courtrooms windows, and at least at
the start of the trial, it had no electric fans
to sculate air. Apart from reporters representing more than one newspapers,
most of those trying to watch were locals and not visitors.
(21:08):
So even though Dayton had turned the town into a
sort of Scopes trial fair it hadn't had the hoped
for rush of tourists. The trial began with some fairly
straightforward questioning of students and other witnesses who's testified about
scopes discussions of evolution. But when Darrow started trying to
bring in expert witnesses to discuss the science of evolution,
(21:31):
Judge Rawlston refused to allow it. He said that the
matter at hand was not whether evolution was scientifically valid,
but whether Scopes had broken the law. Indeed, that would
seem to be the point of the trial. Purportedly, with
a key part of his defense strategy effectively torpedoed, Clarence
Darrow took another tack. Instead of calling scientists to the
(21:53):
stand to testify as to the validity of the theory
of evolution, he took the highly unusual step of calling
William Jennings Bryan, the opposing counsel, to the stand on
July to act as an expert witness on the validity
of the Bible. At this point, the proceedings had been
moved outdoors due to the oppressive heat in the courtroom
and cracks developing in the ceiling under the weight of
(22:16):
the newly installed fans. I just want to say again,
the defense counsel calling to the stand the prosecutor to
answer questions about something really not related to the issue
at hand. That's weird that it feels a little showbody
like it's a big like yeah, drama move yeah. So,
(22:39):
when Darrow asked if Brian claimed that everything in the
Bible should be literally interpreted William Jennings, Bryan answered, quote,
I believe everything in the Bible should be accepted as
it is given there some of the Bible is given illustratively.
Following that answer, Darrow asked him a bunch of questions
(22:59):
about particular passages from the Bible, like Jonah being swallowed
by a whale and spit out a whole after three days,
and Joshua commanding the sun to sand still and the
Great Flood, and whether the sixth day creation in Genesis
was six actual twenty four hour days, and whether Eve
was literally made from Adam's rib. Basically every Internet conversation
(23:23):
of people of like atheist people asking people of faith
questions about the Bible, Bryant's answers, in many cases sounded
imprecise or contradictory, and at the end, he accused Darrow
of trying to use the court to slur the Bible.
How this was received really depends on who you ask.
Many religious faithful felt as though William Jennings Bryan had
(23:45):
conducted himself admirably in the face of someone who was
clearly trying to humiliate and trap him. Although some Biblical
literalists were disappointed at his description of the six days
of Creation as periods, not literal days. Others thought the
whole exchange was an absurd waste of time unrelated to
the case. But a lot of the news media, like
(24:07):
we said, there were a hundred papers represented their portrayed
Brian in an incredibly negative light. In the Baltimore Evening Sun, H. L.
Menkin wrote, quote, Thus he fought his last fight, eager
only for blood. It quickly became frenzied and preposterous, and
after that pathetic all sense departed from him. He bit
(24:30):
right and left like a dog with rabies. He descended
to demagogi, so dreadful that his very associates blushed. His
one yearning was to keep his yokels. Heated up to
lead his forlorn mob against the foe. That foe Alas
refused to be alarmed. It insisted upon seeing the battle
(24:51):
as a comedy. Even Darrow, who knew better, occasionally yielded
to the prevailing spirit. Finally he lured poor Brian into
a folly almost incredible. The next day, July on, the
judge ruled that Brian could not return to the stand.
Darrow then asked for the jury to begin deliberations, recommending
(25:13):
that they find the defendant guilty. The jury returned with
a verdict less than ten minutes later. Scopes, who had
never taken the stand himself, was guilty. He was fined
one hundred dollars. The a c o used goal at
this point, and the reason that Darrow, who was the
defense attorney, recommended that the jury find his client guilty,
was to appeal this verdict, ideally to appeal it all
(25:36):
the way to the Supreme Court in a case that
would find laws like the Butler Act unconstitutional nationwide. But
that did not happen. At scopes appeal before the Tennessee
Supreme Court, the verdict was overturned on a technicality, and
the original trial judge Rawlston had specified that hundred dollar penalty,
but because the penalty was greater than fifty dollars under
(25:57):
the Tennessee Constitution, it should have been levied by the jury,
not by a judge. With the verdict overturned and the
Tennessee Supreme Court also issuing an opinion that the Butler
Act was constitutional because it didn't mandate or establish any
religious belief or practice, the a c. L U had
nothing left to pursue related to the Butler Act in Tennessee.
(26:19):
Five days after the end of the Scopes trial, William
Jennings Bryan died in his sleep during an afternoon nap.
He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with the words
he kept the Faith on his tombstone, and the romanticized
version of this story is that he died of humiliation
after Darrow's questioning, or that he died of heartbreak after
being denied the opportunity to give his closing statement at
(26:40):
the trial. The two leading candidates for the actual cause
of death are untreated diabetes and stroke. Whatever the cause,
it was almost certainly exacerbated by the stress and physically
grueling heat in the trial. From that point, Brian was
viewed as a martyr within the anti evolution movement. Five
years later Brian College, originally called William Jennings Bryan University,
(27:03):
opened in Dayton as a Christian liberal arts college. The
Scopes Trial had a somewhat contradictory aftermath. Tennessee in general
and Dayton specifically were roundly laughed at in the news media,
which was also particularly unkind to both religious fundamentalism and
two laws forbidding the teaching of evolution, and yet similar
(27:25):
laws were introduced, although unsuccessfully, in the legislatures of California, Delaware, Florida, Maine, Minnesota,
New Hampshire, North Dakota, Virginia, and West Virginia, and the
years following the Scopes Trial, Arkansas and Mississippi each past
laws banning the teaching of evolution. Not long after. Even
though only three states explicitly outlawed the teaching of evolution,
(27:48):
many textbook publishers quietly removed references to it from their
biology textbooks. This included a new Civic Biology whose edition
never specifically references evolution and tiptoes around the basic concepts.
At the same time, the coverage of the trial and
of William Jennings Bryant's death helped coalesce the anti evolution movement.
(28:11):
From sort of a scattered collection of various denominations to
a solid social movement, and Darrow's relentless framing of evolution
and religion as this either or proposition cemented the standard
for how the issue would be discussed for years to come.
Attempts to repeal the Butler Act began in nineteen five,
(28:32):
but failed. It stayed on the books until nineteen sixty seven.
Governor Austin P died in nineteen seven, and his signature
on the Butler Act largely overshadowed the rest of his
legacy for decades. It would also take decades for a
case relating to the teaching of evolution to make it
all the way to the Supreme Court. In nineteen sixty eight,
(28:53):
the Supreme Court heard the case of Susan Epperson, an
Arkansas zoology teacher who had been found guilty of breaking
that state's law prohibiting the teaching of evolution. The Supreme
Court unanimously ruled in Epperson versus Arkansas that laws prohibiting
the teaching of evolution violated the First Amendment, and in
this case, Epperson faced the same dilemma that Scopes did
(29:16):
back in ninety five, Arkansas law had made it illegal
quote to teach the theory or doctrine that mankind ascended
or descended from a lower order of animals end quote,
but the textbook that the state had adopted in nineteen
sixty five had a chapter on that very thing. After
Epperson versus Arkansas, most states that had previously banned the
(29:38):
teaching of evolution instead mandated that equal time be spent
on teaching creationism. This includes Tennessee, which passed the nation's
first law requiring equal time for the Biblical account of creation.
In nineteen seventy three. A federal appeals court ruled this
law on constitutional. Two years later, that ruling applied only
(29:58):
to Tennessee, but in in eight seven, the Supreme Court
ruled that a Louisiana law entitled quote, the Balanced Treatment
for Creation Science and Evolution Science and Public School Instruction
Act was unconstitutional. That case, known as Edward versus Aguiard,
applied nationally. From there, most states that had passed equal
(30:19):
time laws instead began to frame the conversation as one
of intelligent design, or began mandating disclaimers that evolution is
just a theory. In two thousand five, a U S
District Court found that teaching intelligent design in public schools
was unconstitutional in a case known as kits Miller versus
Dover because intelligent design quote cannot uncouple itself from its
(30:42):
creationist and thus religious antecedents. The same year and Salman
versus Cobb County School District, a federal judge examined the
question of whether stickers reading quote evolution is a theory
not a fact concerning the origin of living things end quote,
which the school was putting onto textbooks that had information
(31:03):
about evolution, whether that violated the Constitution, And after going
back and forth through several levels of the courts, that
case was ultimately settled out of court in favor of
the plaintiffs, who were the ones who had objected to
the use of the stickers. So clearly, as states find
new ways to work around this issue, it's probably one
that will continue to come up in the courts. And
(31:27):
in the meantime, Dayton, Tennessee, actually holds an annual Scopes
Trial festival. If you want to get in on that.
If if you yeah, it's uh. It's an interesting phenomenon
because it's partially because I mean, Dayton was really lampooned
a lot after this, uh and and Tennessee also got
(31:48):
a lot of just terrible press afterward. Um. So some
of the Scopes festival is meant to try to reclaim
some of like the less like let's make complete fun
of you side to more like own this is the
thing that happened in our town that was historically important
and not like the way that the media portrayed us
(32:11):
was totally accurate, Like not like that at all. Um,
But it's definitely like there's a play and there's a
festival happens every year. Are there both monkeys and chimpanzees?
I do not know. Um. Thanks so much for joining
us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of
(32:33):
the archive, if you heard an email address or a
Facebook U r L or something similar over the course
of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current
email address is History Podcast at I heart radio dot com.
Our old house stuff works email address no longer works,
and you can find us all over social media at
missed in History. And you can subscribe to our show
(32:55):
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Happy Saturday, everybody. We are coming up on the ninety
five anniversary of the verdict in State of Tessee versus
John Thomas Scopes, also just the Scopes Monkey Trial, so
that seemed like a good time to share our previous
episode on the trial, which originally came out on. One
correction that we got after this episode originally aired is
(00:24):
that the drug store owner and school board president who
played a big role in all of this was Frank E. Robinson.
We incorrectly said his name was Fred. That is an
error that appeared in one of the books Tracy used
for research, Edward Larsen's book Summer of the Gods, and
it's been reproduced as well in a lot of other places.
So thanks to listener Kay for writing to us about
(00:45):
that way back in the day so we can fix
it here at least in the intro. Yeah, Okay was
actually the person that that pointed out that that seems
to be the origin of that particular widely reproduced error. Oh.
We also mentioned at the end of this episode and
any well, Scopes festival organizers had been planning to do
a modified festival this year, focusing just on the outdoor
(01:07):
events and in including social distancing, but ultimately they have
had to cancel due to the ongoing COVID nineteen pandemic.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
(01:28):
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Today we
are going to talk about the Scopes Trial also known
as the Monkey Trial, so known as the Scopes Monkey Trial,
which played out in Dayton, Tennessee, in the summer of
I learned last night from a dear friend of mine
who grew up in Tennessee that they cover this in
(01:50):
Tennessee History Class. Cool. So if you grew up in Tennessee,
or maybe if you've studied law, you might already know
a lot of these details. But a lot of what
most folk know in quotation marks about this trial really
comes from Inherit the Wind, which started as a play
in nineteen fifty five and was adapted into a film
in nineteen sixty. And even if you have never personally
(02:12):
seen Inherit the Wind, which was conceived more as an
allegory for McCarthy ism than an actual portrayal of the
Scopes Trial, it does not even use the same names
or location. A lot of conventional wisdom about the trial
and its personalities and how it played out really have
much deeper roots in inherent the wind than in actual history.
(02:34):
I won't out them by name, but I have a
friend who I mentioned yesterday that we're doing this, and
their reaction was, wait, is that one about slavery? It's like, oh, no,
it's super nice. So there's no shame in having you know,
blind spots in your historical knowledge. Tickled me. And it's
(02:54):
a very smart person. But we all have them, those
weird blind spots. Uh and true. So will now clear
it up, and that person will know all the things
about about slavery at all. No. So. The State of
Tennessee versus John Thomas Scopes was the United States first
major legal battle over the teaching of evolution. Charles Darwin
(03:16):
had published On the Origin of Species by Means of
Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the
Struggle for Life back in eighteen fifty nine, and Darwin
did not invent the idea of evolution. The basic idea
that species change and shift over time goes back millennia
in multiple cultures, but the book itself was hugely influential
(03:37):
and very controversial. By the nineteen teens and twenties, though
Darwin's writings were well established, they were generally accepted in
the field of biology, and as part of a general
trend of progressive educational reform, they also started to be
incorporated into school curricula and the United States teachers were
beginning to unionize, and the National Education Association had recommended
(04:00):
that states try to align their standards for education nationally.
And with this overall trend in standardization, more and more
states were making science a mandatory school requirement, and more
and more science textbooks were addressing evolution. For example, William
Hunter's A Civic Biology Presented in Problems, which was published
(04:22):
in nineteen fourteen, was the approved biology textbook in the
state of Tennessee in nine Like other civic biology texts
of the time, it framed biology in terms of its
practical applicability to other parts of life, like hygiene and
wellness and food safety. Hunter's book included evolution in chapter fourteen,
(04:43):
quote division of labor, the various forms of plants and animals,
and part of that chapter reads the great English scientists
Charles Darwin. From this and other evidence explained the theory
of evolution. This is the belief that simple forms of
life on Earth slowly and gradually gave rise to those
more complex, and that thus ultimately the most complex forms
(05:05):
came into existence. Running parallel to this progressive shift and
educational standards and the inclusion of evolution in science textbooks,
was a rise in religious fundamentalism, particularly Christian fundamentalism. The
term fundamentalism itself was coined in the nineteen twenties, signifying
(05:25):
a strict adherence to certain fundamental concepts of Christian faith
and in some cases interpreting the Bible literally rather than figuratively.
And when it came to evolutionary theory, some Christians, particularly
fundamentalist Christians, objected to the idea that humans came from
monkeys and to the idea that something other than a
(05:46):
divine hand could be credited for life on earth, And
if the Bible was the literal word of God, then
the writings of Charles Darwin and other evolutionary biologists were
directly contradictory to the creation story in the book Genesis. Obviously,
other religions and other nations had their own views on
evolution and whether it should be taught, but Christianity in
(06:08):
the United States is what is relevant to the Scopes trial. Also,
for the sake of clarity, this whole humans came from
Monkey's idea. It's one that a lot of people took
away from the Origin of species and from all the
conversations that followed its publication. But the Origin of species
only very briefly and vaguely alludes to the origins of humankind.
(06:30):
There is nothing in its saying humans came from monkeys.
Darwin's second book, The Descent of Man, came out in
eighteen seventy one, and it is about theories of human origins,
and it's basic conclusion is that quote man is descended
from some less highly organized form. Darwin describes the less
organized form as some ancient, unknown ancestor that does have
(06:53):
some monkey like traits, but it is not a modern monkey. Today,
the scientific consensus is that both humans and monkeys descended
from an ancestor that lived millions of years ago, not
that one came from another. Essentially, two branches of a tree, yes,
a very large and very complex tree. Yes. Yes, yes,
it's not like they each branch off from one spot.
(07:14):
It's there. Yeah, we talked about this in our Pilled
Down Man episode if you are looking for a little
more of that piece of history. So, in the face
of this ongoing conflict between scientific acceptance of evolution and
religious rejection of it, multiple states began considering laws to
(07:36):
ban its teaching. On its face, this was a religious issue.
The idea that children might go to school and come
home questioning their faith was frightening and infuriating too many parents,
especially given that public schools were funded through taxes they
were paying. People were basically like, I want my kid
to go to the school I'm paying for and then
(07:57):
come home and say they don't believe in God anymore.
But it was also a general resistance to the overall
trend of establishing state and national education standards. Many parents
in rural counties didn't like the idea of far away
legislatures in their state capitals or Washington, d c. Setting
rules about what their children would learn while having no
idea what their wishes or needs were. Passing laws against
(08:20):
the teaching of evolution was a way to gain a
sense of control over what children were being taught. In
the face of all these changes to the educational system,
Although Florida and Oklahoma passed laws that were connected to
this basic issue in nineteen twenty three. It was Tennessee
that became the first states who explicitly forbid the teaching
(08:40):
of evolution. In nineteen Representative John W. Butler introduced what
became known as the Butler Act on January twenty one
of that year. He had been interested in introducing similar
legislation as far back as nineteen twenty one, after hearing
a sermon about a young woman who had gone to
college and come home believing in evolution but not in God.
(09:03):
Once Butler had introduced the Act, there was some legislative
back and forth, but ultimately it passed both the Tennessee
House and Senate with overwhelming support. Tennessee's Governor Austin p
signed it into law on March twenty one, after putting
it off until the last possible day and at one
point telling a senator that he thought the bill was absurd. P,
(09:26):
who was in his second term as governor, had already
instituted a number of progressive reforms within the state. He
was at that point trying to pass a massive school
reform bill that would do things like build high schools
in rural counties that didn't have them length in the
school year and make education compulsory. It's possible that p
finally signed the Butler Act in exchange for Congressional support
(09:48):
for his massive school reform bill, or that he recognized
that this bill and the reforms that it was instituting
would face some resistance in rural parts of Tennessee, so
he felt like the Butler would assuage some people's fears
over what he was wanting to do. Even when he
signed it, though he said it was mostly symbolic and
that he did not expect anyone to be charged with
(10:11):
violating it. The Butler Act made it illegal for any
teacher in Tennessee funded schools and universities to quote teach
any theory that denies the story of the divine creation
of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach
instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.
It also established a fine of one hundred to five
hundred dollars, and the Act didn't really offer insight on
(10:34):
what to do about the fact that the state approved
biology textbook laid out the basic concepts of evolution in
chapter fourteen. This all brings us to the Scopes trial,
in which Tennessee teacher John Thomas Scopes was charged with
teaching evolution in defiance of the Butler Act. He was
convicted in a highly publicized trial that played out in
a pretty circus like atmosphere, and it had a lot
(10:56):
of famous names in the legal teams on both sides.
But the whole thing came about in a way that's
significantly different from what people might imagine. We will have
some details after the break. Although local attorneys were also
(11:19):
part of it, the Scopes trial involved a hugely high
profile cast of characters from out of town. There was
defense attorney Clarence Darrow, originally from Ohio, who was one
of America's most famous attorneys. He had represented Eugene V.
Debs after the massive Pullman strike of eight. He'd also
(11:39):
defended Leopold and Loebe and they're highly publicized murder trial.
He's usually credited with getting them a life murder sentence
instead of being executed. And the team on for the
defense also included Arthur Garfield Haze of New York, who
was the a c l used General counsel. The man
arguing for the prosecution, William Jennings Bryan the Great Commoner
(11:59):
was generally from Illinois. He had run for president three
times and served as Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson.
In the years leading up to the trial, he had
also become one of the most prominent anti evolution figures
in the nation, giving speeches with names like the Bible
and its Enemies and the Menace of Darwinism. Hl Mankin,
who wrote some of the most famous and most memorable
(12:21):
coverage of the trial, was from Baltimore, Maryland, and his
coverage ran in the Baltimore Sun. Meanwhile, Dayton, Tennessee, originally
founded as Smith's Crossroads, was a town of less than
eighteen hundred people situated roughly between Chattanooga and Knoxville and
the Tennessee River Valley. In the late nineteenth century, it
had become home to the Dayton Iron and Coal Company, which,
(12:43):
along with the railroad, had become the town's major employer.
But by the nineteen teams the blast furnace had shut down,
leaving farming as the now struggling town's major industry. So
between all the big names and the struggling small town,
it's easy to imagine that this was a case of
a bunch of high salutant city folk blustering in uninvited
(13:04):
to run rough shot over everybody and basically have a giant, public,
unwanted fight. But this was not the case at all,
as still happens today when a newly passed law seems
to run contrary to the Constitution or civil liberties. The
Butler Act immediately caught the attention of the American Civil
Liberties Union. The a c l U publicly offered to
(13:25):
defend any teacher charged with its violation. An advertisement announcing
that the a c l U was seeking a test
case ran in a Chattanooga newspaper on May four. This
advertisement came to the attention of a group of Dayton's
community and civic leaders. Fred E. Robinson's drug store had
become the site of regular meetings that included school superintendent
(13:48):
Walter White, attorneys Herbert and Sue Hicks, Cumberland Cole and
Iron Company manager George Washington Rapilier, and Robinson himself, who
was also the school board president. Some of them did
care about the teaching of evolution as a matter of principle,
but they were far more interested in the community of Dayton.
(14:08):
They thought a great, big trial would bring a lot
of much needed attention and tourism dollars to the town
rapil A, which may also have been rapili A. Documents
spell his name too different ways. Is usually the person
who's credited with convincing them all to go along with
this plan. To get the ball rolling, they just needed
a teacher, and the teacher in question was John Thomas Scopes,
(14:32):
who was then twenty four. Scopes had graduated from the
University of Kentucky the year before, and he was working
at the newly opened Ray County High School teaching algebra
and physics, coaching football, and sometimes substituting in biology. Dayton's
civic leaders thought Scopes would be a good candidate for
this scheme because he was well liked around town, he
(14:53):
was not viewed as some kind of radical, and he
didn't have a family whose livelihood would be threatened if
he did lose his job. Although they hoped it wouldn't
come to that. Scopes wasn't particularly eager to be arrested,
but he agreed to go along with this. He did
not agree with the Butler Act. He did not think
it was possible to teach biology without also teaching evolution.
(15:15):
And he didn't think that evolution was incompatible with religious faith.
Scopes had even already at least supposedly done the necessary
teaching of evolution. The prior April, he had done an
exam review out of the state approved biology textbook. Although
he couldn't remember specifically, he thought probably he'd gone over
the chapter that included evolution. According to some accounts, he
(15:38):
later said that he had not, but in any case,
he was arrested for violating the Butler Act on May seven,
and he was indicted on May twenty five. The town
of Dayton then began to prepare for what it hoped
would be an onslaught of visitors from late May until
early July. The town built a tourist camp to provide
(15:58):
additional housing. It also added a number of improvements to
the courthouse, including an outdoor speakers platform with benches and
loud speakers to handle an overflow crowd. To make the
courtroom more hospitable to reporters and their work. It also
added camera platforms, radio microphones, and telephone and telegraph lines.
But it wasn't just about accommodating lots of visitors or
(16:20):
making the courthouse more accessible to the news media. Dayton
also essentially turned part of its main road into a
festival grounds, complete with vendors and stalls. A scopes trial
Entertainment committee was formed. The Constable's motorcycle got a new label. Monkeyville.
Police businesses hung pictures of apes and monkeys in their windows.
(16:43):
A clothier who happened to be named j. R. Darwin
made the most of it with signs like Darwin is
right inside and Darwin's Big Sale. A whole lot of
store suddenly started stocking plush monkeys. Fred Robinson, who's uh
drug store had been the site of the first conversation
(17:03):
about hatching this plot, Fred Robinson started serving Simion SODA's
at the drug store. He strung a giant banner across
the street reading Robinson's drug Store with where it started
in smaller letters. Underneath. There were also photo ops at
the table where that initial conversation had taken place. A
chimpanzee named Joe Mendy, dressed in a plaid suit and
(17:24):
bow tie, who was one of multiple chimpanzees brought into
town for this was there to greet his customers when
they came into the store. And in addition to all
the business involvement in the overall carnival atmosphere where a
tinerant evangelists who came to town to preach about the
evils of evolution and the rightness of banning it from school.
(17:45):
Another banner was strung outside the courthouse that read, read
your Bible, Bible in all caps. Of course, in theory,
all of this big monkey festival was going on because
of a trial li in court, which we were going
to talk about after another quick sponsor break. Jury's selection
(18:14):
in the Scopes trial began on July. On that same day,
the Judge John T. Ralston took the precaution of impaneling
a second grand jury to reindicte John Scopes. People had
been so worried that some other town was going to
have this same idea and hatch the same plan that
the first indictment had been rushed through, and the judge
(18:37):
was worried that it was invalid. Actual trial proceedings were
put off until the following Monday to allow time for
the radio hookups that had been installed in the courtroom
to actually be connected for broadcasts. The Scopes trial would
be the first trial to be publicly broadcast nationwide, and
it was also filmed for newsreels that were distributed to
(18:57):
movie theaters. The defense and the prosecution each had a
completely different focus for this trial. From the prosecution's point
of view, it was really simple. They would establish that
John Thomas Scopes violated the Butler Act, which was state law,
by teaching evolution in a public school, and they would
establish that the state of Tennessee had the right to
(19:18):
set its own standards for the public school curriculum. The
defense's most practical focus was whether the Act itself was enforceable,
whether it's definition of evolution was precise enough, and whether
a teacher had to both deny the story of divine
creation and teach that man had descended from lower animals
to be in violation of the law. But beyond that,
(19:40):
it was looking at much broader issues than the defense
was like establishing whether the Butler Act was religiously motivated
and the evolution was scientifically sound. Let's focus on religion,
and this angle of religion versus science was really coming
from Clarence Darrow, who was a very vocal agnostic. The
A c. L U would was reluctant to have Darrow
(20:01):
involved in this at all. Viewed the Butler Act primarily
as an act on the freedom of speech, not on
the freedom of religion. This was in part because the
Supreme Court had previously ruled that the free speech clauses
of the First Amendment applied to state governments as well
as to the federal government. It had not yet made
such a ruling related to the freedom of religion, and
(20:24):
that wouldn't happen for several more decades. So basically, the
a c. L U was really looking at this as
a speech issue, and Clarence Darrow was in his own
little world focusing on the religious aspect. Once the trial began,
about a thousand people tried to cram into the courtroom,
which could hold about six hundred, and that happened every day.
(20:45):
The rest listened from benches outside the courthouse. The courtroom
was incredibly tight and incredibly hot, since the giant crush
of people blocked the courtrooms windows, and at least at
the start of the trial, it had no electric fans
to sculate air. Apart from reporters representing more than one newspapers,
most of those trying to watch were locals and not visitors.
(21:08):
So even though Dayton had turned the town into a
sort of Scopes trial fair it hadn't had the hoped
for rush of tourists. The trial began with some fairly
straightforward questioning of students and other witnesses who's testified about
scopes discussions of evolution. But when Darrow started trying to
bring in expert witnesses to discuss the science of evolution,
(21:31):
Judge Rawlston refused to allow it. He said that the
matter at hand was not whether evolution was scientifically valid,
but whether Scopes had broken the law. Indeed, that would
seem to be the point of the trial. Purportedly, with
a key part of his defense strategy effectively torpedoed, Clarence
Darrow took another tack. Instead of calling scientists to the
(21:53):
stand to testify as to the validity of the theory
of evolution, he took the highly unusual step of calling
William Jennings Bryan, the opposing counsel, to the stand on
July to act as an expert witness on the validity
of the Bible. At this point, the proceedings had been
moved outdoors due to the oppressive heat in the courtroom
and cracks developing in the ceiling under the weight of
(22:16):
the newly installed fans. I just want to say again,
the defense counsel calling to the stand the prosecutor to
answer questions about something really not related to the issue
at hand. That's weird that it feels a little showbody
like it's a big like yeah, drama move yeah. So,
(22:39):
when Darrow asked if Brian claimed that everything in the
Bible should be literally interpreted William Jennings, Bryan answered, quote,
I believe everything in the Bible should be accepted as
it is given there some of the Bible is given illustratively.
Following that answer, Darrow asked him a bunch of questions
(22:59):
about particular passages from the Bible, like Jonah being swallowed
by a whale and spit out a whole after three days,
and Joshua commanding the sun to sand still and the
Great Flood, and whether the sixth day creation in Genesis
was six actual twenty four hour days, and whether Eve
was literally made from Adam's rib. Basically every Internet conversation
(23:23):
of people of like atheist people asking people of faith
questions about the Bible, Bryant's answers, in many cases sounded
imprecise or contradictory, and at the end, he accused Darrow
of trying to use the court to slur the Bible.
How this was received really depends on who you ask.
Many religious faithful felt as though William Jennings Bryan had
(23:45):
conducted himself admirably in the face of someone who was
clearly trying to humiliate and trap him. Although some Biblical
literalists were disappointed at his description of the six days
of Creation as periods, not literal days. Others thought the
whole exchange was an absurd waste of time unrelated to
the case. But a lot of the news media, like
(24:07):
we said, there were a hundred papers represented their portrayed
Brian in an incredibly negative light. In the Baltimore Evening Sun, H. L.
Menkin wrote, quote, Thus he fought his last fight, eager
only for blood. It quickly became frenzied and preposterous, and
after that pathetic all sense departed from him. He bit
(24:30):
right and left like a dog with rabies. He descended
to demagogi, so dreadful that his very associates blushed. His
one yearning was to keep his yokels. Heated up to
lead his forlorn mob against the foe. That foe Alas
refused to be alarmed. It insisted upon seeing the battle
(24:51):
as a comedy. Even Darrow, who knew better, occasionally yielded
to the prevailing spirit. Finally he lured poor Brian into
a folly almost incredible. The next day, July on, the
judge ruled that Brian could not return to the stand.
Darrow then asked for the jury to begin deliberations, recommending
(25:13):
that they find the defendant guilty. The jury returned with
a verdict less than ten minutes later. Scopes, who had
never taken the stand himself, was guilty. He was fined
one hundred dollars. The a c o used goal at
this point, and the reason that Darrow, who was the
defense attorney, recommended that the jury find his client guilty,
was to appeal this verdict, ideally to appeal it all
(25:36):
the way to the Supreme Court in a case that
would find laws like the Butler Act unconstitutional nationwide. But
that did not happen. At scopes appeal before the Tennessee
Supreme Court, the verdict was overturned on a technicality, and
the original trial judge Rawlston had specified that hundred dollar penalty,
but because the penalty was greater than fifty dollars under
(25:57):
the Tennessee Constitution, it should have been levied by the jury,
not by a judge. With the verdict overturned and the
Tennessee Supreme Court also issuing an opinion that the Butler
Act was constitutional because it didn't mandate or establish any
religious belief or practice, the a c. L U had
nothing left to pursue related to the Butler Act in Tennessee.
(26:19):
Five days after the end of the Scopes trial, William
Jennings Bryan died in his sleep during an afternoon nap.
He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with the words
he kept the Faith on his tombstone, and the romanticized
version of this story is that he died of humiliation
after Darrow's questioning, or that he died of heartbreak after
being denied the opportunity to give his closing statement at
(26:40):
the trial. The two leading candidates for the actual cause
of death are untreated diabetes and stroke. Whatever the cause,
it was almost certainly exacerbated by the stress and physically
grueling heat in the trial. From that point, Brian was
viewed as a martyr within the anti evolution movement. Five
years later Brian College, originally called William Jennings Bryan University,
(27:03):
opened in Dayton as a Christian liberal arts college. The
Scopes Trial had a somewhat contradictory aftermath. Tennessee in general
and Dayton specifically were roundly laughed at in the news media,
which was also particularly unkind to both religious fundamentalism and
two laws forbidding the teaching of evolution, and yet similar
(27:25):
laws were introduced, although unsuccessfully, in the legislatures of California, Delaware, Florida, Maine, Minnesota,
New Hampshire, North Dakota, Virginia, and West Virginia, and the
years following the Scopes Trial, Arkansas and Mississippi each past
laws banning the teaching of evolution. Not long after. Even
though only three states explicitly outlawed the teaching of evolution,
(27:48):
many textbook publishers quietly removed references to it from their
biology textbooks. This included a new Civic Biology whose edition
never specifically references evolution and tiptoes around the basic concepts.
At the same time, the coverage of the trial and
of William Jennings Bryant's death helped coalesce the anti evolution movement.
(28:11):
From sort of a scattered collection of various denominations to
a solid social movement, and Darrow's relentless framing of evolution
and religion as this either or proposition cemented the standard
for how the issue would be discussed for years to come.
Attempts to repeal the Butler Act began in nineteen five,
(28:32):
but failed. It stayed on the books until nineteen sixty seven.
Governor Austin P died in nineteen seven, and his signature
on the Butler Act largely overshadowed the rest of his
legacy for decades. It would also take decades for a
case relating to the teaching of evolution to make it
all the way to the Supreme Court. In nineteen sixty eight,
(28:53):
the Supreme Court heard the case of Susan Epperson, an
Arkansas zoology teacher who had been found guilty of breaking
that state's law prohibiting the teaching of evolution. The Supreme
Court unanimously ruled in Epperson versus Arkansas that laws prohibiting
the teaching of evolution violated the First Amendment, and in
this case, Epperson faced the same dilemma that Scopes did
(29:16):
back in ninety five, Arkansas law had made it illegal
quote to teach the theory or doctrine that mankind ascended
or descended from a lower order of animals end quote,
but the textbook that the state had adopted in nineteen
sixty five had a chapter on that very thing. After
Epperson versus Arkansas, most states that had previously banned the
(29:38):
teaching of evolution instead mandated that equal time be spent
on teaching creationism. This includes Tennessee, which passed the nation's
first law requiring equal time for the Biblical account of creation.
In nineteen seventy three. A federal appeals court ruled this
law on constitutional. Two years later, that ruling applied only
(29:58):
to Tennessee, but in in eight seven, the Supreme Court
ruled that a Louisiana law entitled quote, the Balanced Treatment
for Creation Science and Evolution Science and Public School Instruction
Act was unconstitutional. That case, known as Edward versus Aguiard,
applied nationally. From there, most states that had passed equal
(30:19):
time laws instead began to frame the conversation as one
of intelligent design, or began mandating disclaimers that evolution is
just a theory. In two thousand five, a U S
District Court found that teaching intelligent design in public schools
was unconstitutional in a case known as kits Miller versus
Dover because intelligent design quote cannot uncouple itself from its
(30:42):
creationist and thus religious antecedents. The same year and Salman
versus Cobb County School District, a federal judge examined the
question of whether stickers reading quote evolution is a theory
not a fact concerning the origin of living things end quote,
which the school was putting onto textbooks that had information
(31:03):
about evolution, whether that violated the Constitution, And after going
back and forth through several levels of the courts, that
case was ultimately settled out of court in favor of
the plaintiffs, who were the ones who had objected to
the use of the stickers. So clearly, as states find
new ways to work around this issue, it's probably one
that will continue to come up in the courts. And
(31:27):
in the meantime, Dayton, Tennessee, actually holds an annual Scopes
Trial festival. If you want to get in on that.
If if you yeah, it's uh. It's an interesting phenomenon
because it's partially because I mean, Dayton was really lampooned
a lot after this, uh and and Tennessee also got
(31:48):
a lot of just terrible press afterward. Um. So some
of the Scopes festival is meant to try to reclaim
some of like the less like let's make complete fun
of you side to more like own this is the
thing that happened in our town that was historically important
and not like the way that the media portrayed us
(32:11):
was totally accurate, Like not like that at all. Um,
But it's definitely like there's a play and there's a
festival happens every year. Are there both monkeys and chimpanzees?
I do not know. Um. Thanks so much for joining
us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of
(32:33):
the archive, if you heard an email address or a
Facebook U r L or something similar over the course
of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current
email address is History Podcast at I heart radio dot com.
Our old house stuff works email address no longer works,
and you can find us all over social media at
missed in History. And you can subscribe to our show
(32:55):
on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the I Heart Radio app,
and wherever else listen to podcasts stuff you missed in
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