DOCUMENT PROJECT 21

The Scopes “Monkey Trial”

In the culture clashes of the 1920s, one of the most prominent battlegrounds was evolution. Modernists accepted Darwin’s theories as valid scientific principle, while traditionalists believed evolution a blasphemous challenge to the Genesis creation story. More broadly, religious fundamentalists felt the era’s urban intellectualism would destroy the rural, Protestant America they loved. When Tennessee banned the teaching of evolution, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) advertised for someone to test this law. Local business leaders in the eastern Tennessee town of Dayton persuaded high school science teacher John Scopes to do so, hoping a trial would generate publicity. Neither they nor Scopes was prepared for the firestorm that followed. Both sides saw this case as a struggle for the soul of America, and journalists from around the country flocked to Dayton. It was the first trial in U.S. history to be broadcast live on radio.

Adding to the growing media circus were the attorneys who volunteered for each side. Leading Scopes’s team was Clarence Darrow, a colorful and famous defense attorney who sat on the ACLU’s national committee. Representing the prosecution was William Jennings Bryan, a three-time Democratic presidential candidate whose politics were long synonymous with rural values and fundamentalism.

Was America a modern cosmopolitan society or one based on rural Protestantism? The outcome of the case satisfied neither side. Scopes was found guilty and given a $100 fine, but fundamentalism suffered widespread ridicule. When Bryan himself took the stand as an expert witness, Darrow’s persistent questioning led Bryan to assert a literal interpretation of the Bible and then defend it by stating he believed, for example, that the world was created in six days. The press mercilessly mocked Bryan, turning him into a symbol of religious bigotry and ignorance.

The documents that follow offer a number of different viewpoints about faith, science, and the trial. As you read them, consider the political, cultural, and regional differences that engendered these varied beliefs.