Scopes Trial
What was the Scopes Trial about?
Who defended John T. Scopes?
What was the outcome of the Scopes Trial?
What was the Butler Act?
Dubbed the “trial of the century,” the 1925 case of State of Tennessee v. John T. Scopes—commonly known as the Scopes Trial and derisively nicknamed the “Monkey Trial”—brought international attention to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee. From July 10 to 21, in front of thousands of spectators and a national radio audience, the country’s most famous criminal defense attorney and an avowed agnostic, Clarence Darrow, faced off against three-time presidential nominee and Christian fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan. At issue was high-school teacher John T. Scopes’s alleged violation of a Tennessee state law that banned the teaching of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. The trial’s proceedings illuminated many of the cultural tensions in 1920s American society: secularism versus fundamentalism, science versus religious dogma, and modernism versus traditional views. Although the trial did not ultimately settle the debate over evolutionary theory, it brought the conversation about the scientific evidence for evolution into the public discourse and ignited a dialogue that continues to the present day.
The Butler Act and the ACLU
- January 28, 1925: House Bill 185 passes the Tennessee House of Representatives by an overwhelming majority: 71–5. Introduced by Democratic legislator John Washington Butler on January 21, the bill prohibits public school teachers from teaching evolution.
- March 13, 1925: Following spirited internal debate and a fundamentalist pressure campaign led by preacher Billy Sunday, the Tennessee State Senate passes House Bill 185 by a vote of 24–6.
- March 21, 1925: Now called the Butler Act, House Bill 185 is signed into law by Gov. Austin Peay. Teaching evolution in any Tennessee school that receives state funding becomes a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of $100–500. It was the first such law in the United States.
- May 17, 1967: The state of Tennessee repeals the Butler Act.
In March 1925 the Tennessee legislature passed the Butler Act, which declared unlawful the teaching of “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.” The act alarmed groups and individuals committed to academic independence and to freedoms of speech and religion, including lawyers working for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Founded in 1920 to defend constitutional liberties in the United States, the ACLU sought to organize a test case to challenge the constitutionality of the Butler Act. It published advertisements in Tennessee newspapers, seeking a teacher willing to defy the law. One such advertisement appeared in the Chattanooga Daily Times on May 4. Included in the article, entitled “Plan Assault on State Law on Evolution: Civil Liberties Union to File Test Case,” the ACLU’s pitch read:
We are looking for a Tennessee teacher who is willing to accept our services in testing this law in the courts. Our lawyers think a friendly test can be arranged without costing a teacher his or her job. Distinguished counsel have volunteered their services. All we need now is a willing client. By this test we hope to render a real service to freedom of teaching throughout the country, for we do not believe the law will be sustained.
Dayton civic leader and Cumberland Coal and Iron Company manager George W. Rappleyea read the May 4 advertisement and convened a meeting of prominent residents, including the school superintendent Walter White, to propose recruiting a Dayton teacher to violate the law. Rappleyea saw the case as an opportunity to bring much-needed attention to Dayton, which had seen falling population numbers and hard economic times. The group engaged John T. Scopes, a 24-year-old high-school math and science teacher and football coach who also was an occasional biology substitute. Soon after, while teaching a biology class, Scopes read aloud a passage from George William Hunter’s A Civic Biology (1914). That work describes evolution as “the belief that simple forms of life on the earth slowly and gradually gave rise to those more complex and that thus ultimately the most complex forms came into existence.” Scopes was arrested on May 7 and indicted by a grand jury on May 25 for violating the Butler Act.
Both sides quickly assembled their teams, with anti-evolution crusader William Jennings Bryan leading the prosecution and secularist Clarence Darrow volunteering for the defense (the Scopes Trial was the first time Darrow ever worked pro bono). World attention soon focused on Dayton and the trial proceedings, which promised, and quickly delivered, a confrontation between fundamentalist literal belief and liberal interpretation of the Scriptures.
Outside the Rhea County Courthouse, the town of Dayton presented a circuslike atmosphere for thousands of onlookers, with tents, itinerant preachers, food vendors, and pictures of monkeys decorating shop windows. Exhibits along Main Street included two chimpanzees and a man of short stature that purported to demonstrate evolution’s “missing link” between man and ape. Hundreds of journalists covered the trial, which Chicago’s WGN Radio broadcast live at a cost of $1,000 a day—the first national broadcast of a live trial proceeding.
Trial proceedings
Jury selection began on July 10, and opening statements, which included Darrow’s impassioned speech about the unconstitutionality of the Butler law and his claim that the law violated freedom of religion, began on July 13. Judge John Raulston ruled out any test of the law’s constitutionality or argument on the validity of evolutionary theory on the basis that Scopes, rather than the Butler law, was on trial. Raulston determined that expert testimony from scientists would be inadmissible.
The trial’s climax came on July 20, when, in an unprecedented legal maneuver, Darrow called on Bryan to testify as an expert witness for the prosecution on the Bible. Raulston moved the trial to the courthouse lawn, citing the stifling heat inside and the fear that the swell of spectators would cause the floor to collapse. Against the advice of the prosecution, Bryan was willing to testify, saying during cross-examination that the defense “did not come here to try this case. They came to try revealed religion. I am here to defend it, and they can ask me any question they please.”
Journalist H.L. Mencken attended the Scopes Trial and wrote daily dispatches for The Baltimore Evening Sun. A caustic critic of fundamentalism, it was Mencken who gave the proceedings its “Monkey Trial” nickname.
The crowd on the courthouse lawn grew as Darrow challenged Bryan on various biblical stories—including the length of Earth’s creation, Jonah and the whale, and Noah’s Ark and the flood—and the validity and practicality of their literal interpretation. Darrow forced Bryan into a series of contradictions and revealed the limitations of his biblical knowledge. Under pressure, Bryan responded by claiming that Darrow’s purpose was “to cast ridicule on everybody who believes in the Bible.” Darrow never asked Bryan about evolution, but on the whole, his questioning undermined Bryan’s credibility.
The following morning Raulston ruled from the bench that Bryan would not be returning to the stand and that his testimony would be expunged from the trial transcript, stating:
I feel that the testimony of Mr. Bryan can shed no light upon any issues that will be pending before the higher courts. The issue now is whether or not Mr. Scopes taught that man descended from a lower order of animals. It isn’t a question of whether God created man as all complete at once, or it isn’t a question as to whether God created man by the process of development and growth. Those questions have been eliminated by this Court, and the only question we have now is whether or not this defendant taught that man descended from a lower order of animals. As I see it, after due deliberation, I feel that Mr. Bryan’s testimony cannot aid the higher court in determining that question.
After Raulston limited the trial to the single question of whether Scopes had taught evolution (which he admitted to doing), Darrow called for the jury to find Scopes guilty. The jury concurred on a guilty verdict after only nine minutes of deliberation; Scopes was convicted and fined $100 on July 21. Following his sentencing, Scopes addressed the court:
Your Honor, I feel that I have been convicted of violating an unjust statute. I will continue in the future, as I have in the past, to oppose the law in any way I can. Any other action would be in violation of my ideal of academic freedom, that is, to teach the truth as guaranteed in our Constitution, of personal and religious freedom. I think the fine is unjust.
For his part, Bryan never got the chance to question Darrow. His closing argument, where he had planned to say “Evolution is not truth; it is merely a hypothesis—it is millions of guesses strung together,” went undelivered in court. (Bryan did give a public recitation of his speech on July 25.) While the two men continued to trade questions and answers about Darrow’s religious views in the press, it was commonly understood that although Bryan won the case, Darrow and the ACLU won the war by bringing the evidence for evolution to the wider public.
Bryan died in his sleep on July 26. Some speculated that the stress and exhaustion of the Scopes Trial may have hastened his death.
On appeal, the Tennessee State Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the 1925 law but acquitted Scopes on a technicality in how the fine had been issued.
Aftermath and legacy
In the trial’s aftermath, Tennessee prevented the teaching of evolution in the classroom until the Butler Act’s repeal in 1967. Additionally, the state legislatures of Mississippi and Arkansas passed their own bans on the teaching of evolution in 1926 and 1928, respectively, which also lasted for several decades before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Epperson v. State of Arkansas (1968) that the Arkansas law violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause. In 1976 the National Park Service designated the Rhea County Courthouse in Dayton a National Historic Landmark.
- Also called:
- Scopes Monkey Trial
- Date:
- July 10, 1925 - July 21, 1925
- Location:
- Dayton
- Tennessee
- United States
- Context:
- evolution
- Butler Act
Inherit the Wind
Playwrights Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee fictionalized the Scopes Trial in their 1955 play Inherit the Wind. A film version directed by Stanley Kramer followed in 1960 with Spencer Tracy and Fredric March portraying characters based on Darrow and Bryan, respectively. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including for Tracy as best lead actor.