Formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, the "Scopes Monkey Trial" of 1925 was a landmark American legal case in which John Scopes was accused of violating the state's Butler Act by teaching evolution in a state-funded school. The trial instigated by the American Civil Liberties Union was mostly for show, but had major implications for the issue of whether modern science could be taught in public schools by pitting the Fundamentalist Christian belief of Creationism against the Theory of Evolution.
The Butler Act
Tennessee State Representative John W. Butler, a farmer and head of the World Christian Fundamentals Association, lobbied for the passage of anti-evolution laws and in 1925 the eponymous Butler Act passed the state legislature as "Tennessee Code Annotated Title 49 (Education) Section 1922." The law prohibited public school teachers from denying the Biblical account of man's origin, namely that God had created the world and everything in it in seven days. The law also prevented the teaching of the evolution of man from what it referred to as "lower orders of animals," rather than the Biblical account of man appearing fully formed in the person of Adam, closely followed by Eve. Butler admitted, “I didn’t know anything about evolution… I’d read in the papers that boys and girls were coming home from school and telling their fathers and mothers that the Bible was all nonsense.” Tennessee Governor Austin Peay signed the law to solidify his support among rural, Christian conservatives in the state legislature, but did not believe the law would ever need to be enforced or interfere with Tennessee public school education.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), however, staged a scenario that challenged the governor’s assumptions. The non-profit legal organization, whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States", financed a case to test the legality of the Butler Act in a court proceeding that would deliberately attract publicity to the issue. The ACLU recruited Scopes, 25, to purposefully incriminate himself so the case could have a defendant by using a textbook chapter that described the Theory of Evolution on May 5, 1925. Substituting for the regular biology teacher at the high school in Dayton, Tennessee, Scopes said he was unsure whether he had actually taught evolution.
John Thomas Scopes
Teacher John T. Scopes was the defendant in the famous Scopes Trial of 1925, which provided a forum in which to argue the teaching of evolution in public schools in schools.
The Monkey Trial
The trial drew intense publicity and was followed by the press and on the radio throughout America. Reporters flocked to the small town of Dayton to cover the famed attorneys representing each side. William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate for the Democrats, argued for the prosecution’s case supporting Creationism, the idea that God, in a manner beyond our understanding, made the world and everything in it over the course of seven days. Prominent attorney Clarence Darrow spoke in defense of Scopes by presenting the Modernist argument in favor of the Theory of Evolution. Based on research in Charles Darwin’s 1859 book, On the Origin of Species, the theory contends that man developed over millions of years from other biological organisms, including apes (hence the nickname "Scopes Monkey Trial.")
Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan
Defense attorney Clarence Darrow, left, and prosecutor William Jennings Bryan argued the Scopes Trial in 1925, making opposing arguments regarding the teaching of evolution.
The trial, therefore, was both theological and scientific, testing the faith-based belief that the word of God as revealed in the Bible took priority over all human knowledge, or whether religion was consistent with evolution as argued by scientists and other intellectuals. In the end, Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, but the verdict was eventually overturned on a technicality.
The Legacy of the Trial
The trial had both short- and long-term effects 0n the teaching of science in United States schools. The immediate effects of the trial are evident in the high school biology texts used in the second half of the 1920s and the early 1930s. Of the most widely used books, there is only one listing for Evolution in the index and in the wake of the trial, under pressure from Fundamentalist groups, the entry is offset by Biblical quotations. As the anti-evolutionist movement died out in the mid-1930s, biology textbooks began to include the previously removed evolutionary theory.
Though often upheld as a blow for the Fundamentalists, the Monkey Trial victory was not complete. The ACLU had taken on the trial as a cause, but in the wake of Scopes' conviction the organization was unable to find addition volunteers to oppose the Butler law. By 1932, the ACLU gave up its legal strategy and the anti-evolutionary legislation was not challenged again until 1965. Still, the teaching of evolution expanded, while efforts to use state laws to reverse the trend failed in the court of public opinion.
The case also lived on in popular culture when it was dramatized in the play and subsequent movie, Inherit the Wind. The 1960 film version, starring Spencer Tracy, Frederic March and Gene Kelly, was nominated for four Academy Awards and two Golden Globes.
Inherit the Wind
Inherit the Wind, a 1960 film starring Spencer Tracy, dramatized the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925.