The Monkey Trial Never Ended

It was the “Trial of the Century” at least the second one in the past two years (the previous one, the trial of child killers Leopold and Loeb), and was also defended by the great Chicago lawyer, Clarence Darrow.

In 1925, the Tennesee legislature passed a law punishing the teaching of any theory that “denied the divine creation of man”.

So, evolution.

The American Civil Liberties Union (the ACLU), founded just five years before, wanted a test case, a win to establish themselves and their mission. They ran ads in the Tennesse newspapers, looking for a teacher wanting to participate in a test case.

As much as I love the play and movie "Inherit the Wind", (yes, I want to play Arthur Drummond, their “Clarence Darrow”), it does a disservice to William Jennings Bryan (in the person of "Matthew Harrison Brady"). Bryan was backward in his fundamentalist thinking but was a kind and generous man who didn't want John T. Scopes punished and even offered to pay the $100 fine Scopes was charged against him.

Those Americans who know about the trial, see it as the dramatic clash between Clarence Darrow (probably the most famous lawyer in America, and a hero of labor and civil rights) and Bryan, the "Great Commoner" and thrice-nominated Democratic presidential candidate. It's funny, how the Scopes trial has gone from a defeat for the Scopes defense and celebrated among the anti-evolutionary forces to being a win for Darrow and the ACLU, Scopes, and the forces of academic freedom. Reporter Fredrick Lewis Allen was the person who helped bring this about. Allen published "Only Yesterday, An Informal History of the 1920s", in 1931. Allen was not a historian but a newspaper reporter. He dug into the files for the top stories for every year, looked at the news reports, and trusted his memory for the rest. He published his book barely a year after the Stock Market crash of 1929 and was shocked to see the Depression Era public embrace it, making it the best-selling non-fiction book of the 1930s.

The problem with the book is while it has some great storytelling, it often fails as history. When he gets to the Scopes Trial, he strips to the basics, throwing out everyone but Clarence Darrow and Bryan, and missing the importance of Bryan admitting the "days of creation" might not have been 24-hour days. For his literal Bible-believing brethren, this was a betrayal. Allen made the trial a cartoon, but an effective one, that changed the public perception of the trial from a win for the fundamentalist to a victory for the side of Scopes, Darrow, and their sponsor, the ACLU (Allen stripped them out of the story, btw, along with almost all co-counsels).

Inherit the Wind also helped cement this view for the public, though lately, more information has become available (the Pulitzer Prize winner "Summer for the Gods" is highly recommended), and the picture is more balanced. The Fundamentalists are still at it though, still pounding tables and trying to cite Scopes himself as supporting their views.

In Dayton TN, at the courthouse where the Scopes trial took place, Bryan College (yes, a Fundamentalist college named after Bryan) erected a statue in 2005 on the lawn where the infamous cross-examination had taken place.

In 2017, a statue of Clarence Darrow, paid for by secular organizations and private donations, joined it. Darrow once again stood holding his suspenders and pointed at Bryan accusingly. Some in Dayton met the announcement and dedication with protests, recalling the original humid summer of 1925. Mostly the citizens were happy to be in the spotlight again, albeit for their most infamous moment.

Still, the Scopes trial continues to speak to us, as book banning and fundamentalism continue trying to force themselves into schools and government, we can look back to the long ago, but not long ago, summer of 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee, and that summer for the gods.