22 The Scopes Trial
Edward J. Larson
During the summer of 1925, the state of Tennessee indicted, tried, and
convicted John T. Scopes for teaching the Darwinian theory of human
evolution to students at Rhea County High School in Dayton, Tennessee.
The episode made headlines in newspapers throughout the United States
and Western Europe, and it has justly remained famous ever since. The trial
was not a hostile proceeding, however. It was initiated by persons and
groups opposed to a then-new Tennessee statute outlawing the teaching of
the theory of human evolution. Scopes volunteered to stand trial as a
means to test the statute. It was a made-for-the-media event that at the
time and ever since has dramatized the tension between the authority of
science and that of religion in modern America.
Edward J. Larson is the Richard B. Russell Professor of History and
Law and chair of the History Department at the University of Georgia. He
received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in history for Summer for the Gods: The
Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion
(New York: Basic Books, 1977). His latest book is Evolution’s Workshop:
God and Science on the Galapagos Islands (New York: Basic Books,
2001).
THE SCOP ES TRIAL remains the best-known encounter between science and
religion to take place in the United States. It occurred in 1925, soon after the
Tennessee state legislature passed a statute forbidding public-school teachers
from instructing students in the theory of human evolution. The law was the
first major success of an intense national campaign by Protestant
fundamentalists against the teaching of organic evolution in public schools. The
so-called antievolution crusade, which had begun in earnest three years earlier,
aroused fierce opposition from many American scientists, educators, and civil
libertarians. After passage of the Tennessee antievolution statute, the growing
public controversy soon focused on the small Tennessee town of Dayton, where
a local science teacher named John T. Scopes (1900–1970) accepted the
invitation of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to challenge the new
law in court. The media promptly proclaimed it “the trial of the century” as this
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young teacher (backed by the nation’s scientific, educational, and cultural
establishments) stood against the forces of fundamentalist religious lawmaking.
Setting the Stage
The trial itself was more a media circus than a serious criminal prosecution. It
began when Dayton civil engineer George W. Rappleyea, a vocal opponent of the
antievolution law, learned of the ACLU’s offer to assist any Tennessee teacher
willing to challenge the new restriction in court. He immediately saw a chance to
strike the statute and promote his community. Such a trial would put Dayton on
the map, Rappleyea explained to other civic leaders. They agreed and asked John
Scopes to stand trial.
Except for the fact that he did not teach biology, Scopes was an ideal
defendant for the test case. Twenty-four years old at the time, Scopes had just
completed his first year of teaching general science and coaching football at
Dayton’s public high school. A popular newcomer to town, he had little to lose
from challenging the law—unlike the biology teacher, who had a family and also
served as the high-school principal. Scopes looked the part of an earnest young
teacher, complete with horn-rimmed glasses and a boyish face that made him
appear academic but not threatening. Naturally shy, cooperative, and well liked,
he would not alienate parents or taxpayers with soapbox speeches on evolution
or give the appearance of a radical or ungrateful public employee. Yet his friends
knew that Scopes disapproved of the new law and accepted an evolutionary
view of human origins. Further, Scopes’s father, an immigrant railroad mechanic
and labor organizer, was a militant socialist and religious agnostic. John Scopes
inclined toward his father’s views about government and religion but in an
easygoing way. When asked by the local school board president and the school
superintendent if he would stand trial for teaching evolution, Scopes readily
consented, even though he doubted that he had ever violated the law.
Bryan versus Darrow
Ever since Charles Darwin had published his theory of evolution in 1859,
some conservative Christians had objected to the materialistic implications of its
naturalistic explanation for the origins of man. M any of them maintained that
God especially created the first humans, as the Bible suggested in Genesis, and
rejected the notion that people had evolved from “brutes.” Early in the twentieth
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century, these objections intensified with the spread of fundamentalism as a
reaction by some traditional American Protestants to increased religious
liberalism within their mainline denominations, especially because many of their
opponents embraced an evolutionary view of religion. Fighting for the
fundamentals of biblical orthodoxy, many fundamentalist leaders denounced
evolutionary thinking in both science and religion.
American politician and orator William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925), a former
Democratic presidential nominee with decidedly conservative religious beliefs,
added his voice to this chorus opposing evolutionary teaching after World War I,
as he came to see Darwinian theories of survival of the fittest (known as social
Darwinism when applied to human society) behind excessive militarism,
imperialism, and laissez-faire capitalism—the three greatest sins in Bryan’s
political theology. With his Progressive political instinct of seeking legislative
solutions to social problems, Bryan called for the enactment of state restrictions
on teaching the Darwinian theory of human evolution in public schools. Indeed,
the antievolution movement had all the trappings of a political campaign as
Bryan spoke, wrote, and lobbied for such laws across America during the early
1920s. Following a near miss in Kentucky in 1922, antievolution bills appeared
in state legislatures throughout the country—with Bryan behind them all—
culminating in the passage of the Tennessee law in 1925. When it became
apparent that the ACLU was seeking to discredit that new law through the trial
of John Scopes, Bryan volunteered to assist the prosecutors with the object of
explaining why such a restriction was needed.
Bryan’s pending appearance in Dayton drew in Clarence Darrow (1857–
1938). By the twenties, Darrow stood out as the most famous trial lawyer in
America. He had gained fame as the country’s premier defender of labor
organizers and political radicals but also was known for his militant opposition
to religious influences in public life, particularly to biblically inspired legal
restrictions on personal freedom. In this cause, he was a pioneer. His opposition
to religious lawmaking stemmed from his belief that revealed religion, especially
Christianity, divided people into warring sects, caused them to be judgmental,
and was an irrational basis for action in a modern scientific age. In popular
speeches, books, and articles, Darrow sought to expose biblical literalism as both
irrational and dangerous. He welcomed the hullabaloo surrounding the
antievolution crusade. It rekindled interest in his attacks on the Bible, which once
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had appeared hopelessly out of date in light of modern developments in mainline
Christian thought but now seemed to regain relevance with the rise of
fundamentalism. When Bryan offered to prosecute Scopes, Darrow volunteered
to defend him. Darrow immediately became the brightest light in the already
luminous defense team assembled by the ACLU to challenge Tennessee’s
antievolution law.
With Bryan and Darrow on board, Dayton civic leaders could only marvel at
the success of their publicity scheme. They feted both men with banquets in
their honor and housed them in two of Dayton’s finest private homes.
National Interest
The prospect of these two renowned orators—Bryan and Darrow—actually
litigating the profound issues of science versus religion and academic freedom
versus popular control over public education turned the trial into a media
sensation at the time and into the stuff of legend thereafter. News of the trial
dominated the headlines during the weeks leading up to it and pushed nearly
everything else off American front pages throughout the eight-day event. Two
hundred reporters covered the story in Dayton, including some of the country’s
best correspondents, who represented many of the major newspapers and
magazines. Thousands of miles of telegraph wires were hung to transmit every
word spoken in court, and pioneering live radio broadcasts carried the oratory to
the listening public. Newsreel cameras recorded the encounter, with the film
flown directly to major Northern cities for projection in movie houses. The
media billed it as “the trial of the century” before it even began, and it lived up to
its billing.
For those involved, the encounter resembled a popular debate before a
national audience more than it did a criminal prosecution tried before local jurors,
a fact that explains the decision of the judge to permit radio microphones,
newsreel cameras, and telegraph key operators in the courtroom. The courtroom
arguments and speeches by both sides addressed the nation rather than the jurors
(who missed most of the oratory anyway because it had so little to do with the
facts of the case that it was delivered with the jury excused). The defense divided
its arguments among its three principal attorneys. The prominent New York
attorney Arthur Garfield Hays raised the standard ACLU arguments that
Tennessee’s antievolution statute violated the individual rights of teachers.
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Former Assistant Secretary of State Dudley Field M alone, a liberal Catholic,
argued that the scientific theory of evolution did not necessarily conflict with an
open-minded reading of Genesis. Darrow, for his part, concentrated on
debunking fundamentalist reliance on revealed Scripture as a source of knowledge
about nature that was suitable for setting educational standards. Their common
goal, as Hays stated at the time, was to make it “possible that laws of this kind
will hereafter meet the opposition of an aroused public opinion.”
The prosecution countered with a half-dozen local attorneys led by the
state’s able prosecutor and future U.S. senator, Tom Stewart, plus Bryan and his
son, William Jennings Jr., a California lawyer. In court, they focused on proving
that Scopes broke the law and objected to any attempt to litigate the merits of
that statute. The public, acting through elected legislators, should control the
content of public education, they maintained. The elder Bryan, who had not
practiced law for three decades, stayed uncharacteristically quiet in court and
saved his oratory for lecturing the assembled press and public outside the
courtroom about the vices of teaching evolution and the virtues of majority rule.
He also prepared a thunderous three-hour-long address on these points that he
planned to deliver as the prosecution’s closing argument. As the actual trial
played itself out, however, Darrow managed to frustrate Bryan’s plan by
waiving his own close because, under Tennessee practice, the defense controlled
whether there would be closing arguments.
The Trial Unfolds
First came jury selection. Darrow typically stressed this part of a trial as
being critical for the defense and often spent weeks going through hundreds of
veniremen before settling on twelve jurors who just might be open to his
arguments and acquit his typically notorious defendant. Darrow had a different
objective at the Scopes trial, however. He wanted to convict the statute rather
than acquit the defendant, and only judges could do this. Jurors simply applied
the law to the facts of the case. Darrow could have won an acquittal by arguing
that Scopes (who, after all, was not even a biology teacher) never violated the
statute, but that would have left the statute intact. Instead, the defense sought
either to have the trial judge strike the statute, which was all but beyond his role,
or to have Scopes convicted and then appeal to a higher court, which could
review the statute. Hence, Darrow quickly accepted even the simplest of jurors,
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including several who had never heard of the theory of evolution and one who
could not read. This, he hoped, would dramatize the folly of nonscientists, be
they jurors or legislators, sitting in judgment on the teaching of a scientific idea
such as evolution.
No sooner was the jury selected than it was excused from the courtroom—for
days—as the parties wrangled over defense motions to strike the statute as
unconstitutional. Although these arguments occasionally soared into dramatic
pleas from the defense for academic freedom and from the prosecution for
majority rule, they generally skirted the underlying issues of science versus
religion. Strictly following Tennessee precedent, the trial judge denied the
motions anyway. Such issues were reserved for the state supreme court to
resolve on appeal, he ruled.
The prosecution then presented uncontested testimony by students and
school officials that Scopes had taught evolution. After the prosecution’s brief
presentation, the defense offered the testimony of fifteen national experts in
science and religion, all prepared to defend the theory of evolution as a valid
scientific theory that could be taught without public harm. The prosecution
immediately objected to such testimony as irrelevant to the issue of whether
Scopes had violated the law. The law should not be on trial, prosecutors argued,
only the defendant. After days of debate, the judge agreed with the prosecution
and the trial appeared to have ended without ever directly taking up the
promised issues of science and religion in public education.
Bryan’s Testimony
Frustrated by his failure to discredit the antievolution law through the
testimony of scientists and liberal theologians, Darrow sought the same result by
inviting Bryan to take the witness stand and face questions about it. Although he
could have declined, Bryan accepted Darrow’s challenge. Up to this point, lead
prosecutor Tom Stewart had masterfully limited the proceedings and, with help
from a friendly judge, confined his wily opponents. But Stewart could not
control his impetuous co-counsel, especially because the judge seemed eager to
hear Bryan defend the faith. “They did not come here to try this case,” Bryan
explained early in his testimony. “They came here to try revealed religion. I am
here to defend it, and they can ask me any questions they please.” Darrow did
just that.
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Thinking the trial all but over, except for the much-awaited closing oratory,
and hearing that cracks had appeared in the ceiling below the overcrowded,
second-floor courtroom, the judge had moved the afternoon session outside onto
the courthouse lawn. The crowd swelled as word of the encounter spread. From
the five hundred persons who evacuated the courtroom, the number rose to an
estimated three thousand people spread over the lawn—nearly twice the town’s
normal population. The participants appeared on a crude wooden platform
erected for the proceedings, looking much like Punch and Judy puppets
performing at an outdoor festival. Enterprising youngsters passed through the
crowd hawking refreshments. Darrow posed the well-worn questions of the
village skeptic: Did Jonah live inside a whale for three days? How could Joshua
lengthen the day by making the sun (rather than the earth) stand still? Where did
Cain get his wife? In a narrow sense, as Stewart persistently complained,
Darrow’s questions had nothing to do with the case because they never inquired
about human evolution. In a broad sense, as Hays repeatedly countered, they
had everything to do with it because they challenged biblical literalism. Best of
all for Darrow, no good answers to the questions existed.
Darrow questioned Bryan as a hostile witness, peppering him with queries
and giving him little chance to explain. At times, the encounter resembled a firing
line:
“You claim that everything in the Bible should be literally interpreted?”
“I believe everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there;
some of the Bible is given illustratively.…”
“But when you read that … the whale swallowed Jonah … how do you
literally interpret that?”
“… I believe in a God who can make a whale and can make a man and
make both of them do what he pleases.… ”
“But do you believe he made them—that he made such a fish and it was
big enough to swallow Jonah?”
“Yes sir. Let me add: One miracle is just as easy to believe as another.”
“It is for me … just as hard.”
“It is hard to believe for you, but easy for me. … When you get beyond
what man can do, you get within the realm of miracles; and it is just as easy
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to believe the miracle of Jonah as any other miracle in the Bible.”
Such affirmations undercut the appeal of fundamentalism. On the stump,
Bryan effectively championed the cause of biblical faith by addressing the great
questions of life: The special creation of humans in God’s image gave purpose to
every person, and the bodily resurrection of Christ gave hope for eternal life to
believers. But Darrow did not inquire about these grand miracles. For many
Americans, laudable simple faith became laughable crude belief when applied to
Jonah’s whale, Noah’s flood, and Adam’s rib. Yet Bryan acknowledged accepting
each of these biblical miracles on faith and professed that all miracles were
equally easy to believe.
Bryan fared little better when he tried to rationalize two of the biblical
passages raised by Darrow. In an apparent concession to modern astronomy,
Bryan suggested that God extended the day for Joshua by stopping the earth
rather than the sun. Similarly, in line with nineteenth-century evangelical
scholarship, Bryan affirmed his understanding that the Genesis days of creation
represented periods of time, leading to the following exchange, with Darrow
asking the questions:
“Have you any idea of the length of these periods?”
“No; I don’t.”
“Do you think the sun was made on the fourth day?”
“Yes.”
“And they had evening and morning without the sun?”
“I am simply saying it is a period.”
“They had evening and morning for four periods without the sun, do you
think?”
“I believe in creation as there told, and if I am not able to explain it I will
accept it.”
The earth could be 600,000,000 years old, Bryan admitted. Though he had
not ventured far beyond the bounds of biblical literalism, the defense made the
most of it. “Bryan had conceded that he interpreted the Bible,” Hays gloated.
“He must have agreed that others have the same right.”
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Stewart tried to end the two-hour-long interrogation at least a dozen times,
but Bryan refused to stop. “I am simply trying to protect the word of God
against the greatest atheist or agnostic in the United States,” he shouted,
pounding his fists in rage. “I want the papers to know I am not afraid to get on
the stand in front of him and let him do his worst.” The crowd cheered this
outburst and every counterthrust he attempted. Darrow received little applause
but inflicted the most jabs. “The only purpose M r. Darrow has is to slur the
Bible, but I will answer his questions,” Bryan exclaimed at the end. “I object to
your statement,” Darrow shouted back, both men now standing and shaking their
fists at each other. “I am examining your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian
on earth believes.” The judge finally had heard enough and abruptly adjourned
court for the day. He never let the interrogation resume.
Legacy
Although partisans on both sides claimed the advantage, at the time most
neutral observers viewed the trial as a draw, and none saw it as decisive.
America’s adversarial legal system tends to drive parties apart rather than to
reconcile them. That was certainly the result in this case. Despite Bryan’s
stumbling on the witness stand (which his supporters attributed to his notorious
interrogator’s wiles), both sides effectively communicated their message from
Dayton—maybe not well enough to win converts but at least sufficiently to
energize those already predisposed toward their viewpoint. Owing largely to the
media’s portrayal of Darrow’s effective cross-examination of Bryan, later made
even more cutting in the popular play and film Inherit the Wind, millions of
Americans thereafter ridiculed religious opposition to the theory of evolution.
Yet the widespread coverage that was given Bryan’s impassioned objections to
the theory made opposition to it all but an article of faith among American
fundamentalists. When Bryan died a week later in Dayton, fundamentalists
acquired a martyr to their cause.
Consequently, the pace of antievolutionist activism actually quickened after
the trial, but it encountered heightened popular resistance. Two other states
promptly passed antievolution statutes modeled on the Tennessee law and
several others imposed lesser restrictions. An anticipated victory in the
M innesota legislature turned into a demoralizing defeat, however. When one
Rhode Island legislator introduced such a proposal in 1927, his bemused
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colleagues referred it to the Committee on Fish and Game, where it died without
a hearing or a vote. The divided and divisive response on this issue continues to
the present, as some school officials impose restrictions on teaching evolution
while others ridicule them. Underlying this rift, surveys of public opinion
consistently reveal that Americans remain nearly evenly split between those
accepting the scientific theory of human evolution and those believing that God
specially created Adam and Eve within the past ten thousand years.
With time and countless retellings, the Scopes trial has become part of the
fabric of American culture. For some, it grew to symbolize the threat to scientific
freedom and progress posed not simply by antievolutionism but also by
religiously motivated lawmaking generally. For others, it suggested a growing
hostility to religious faith within the scientific community and modern American
society. Each side drew its own lessons from the Scopes trial and viewed future
developments in light of those lessons.
B IB LIOG RAPHY
Conkin, Paul K. When All the Gods Trembled: Darwin, Scopes, and American
Intellectuals. Lanham, M d.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998.
Darrow, Clarence. The Story of My Life. New York: Grosset, 1932.
Ginger, Ray. Six Days or Forever? Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes. London:
Oxford University Press, 1958.
Larson, Edward J. Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s
Continuing Debate over Science and Religion. New York: Basic Books, 1997.
———. Trial and Error: The American Controversy over Creation and
Evolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Lawrence, Jerome, and Robert E. Lee. Inherit the Wind. New York: Bantam,
1960.
Levine, Lawrence W. Defender of the Faith: William Jennings Bryan, the Last
Decade, 1915–1925. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965.
M arsden, George M . The Soul of the American University: From Protestant
Establishment to Established Non-belief. New York: Oxford University Press,
1994.
Numbers, Ronald L. Darwinism Comes to America. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1998.
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———. The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism. New York:
Knopf, 1992.
Tierney, Kevin. Darrow: A Biography. New York: Croswell, 1979.
Tompkins, Jerry D., ed. D-Days at Dayton: Reflections on the Scopes Trial.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965.
Walker, Samuel. In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
World’s Most Famous Court Case: Tennessee Evolution Case. Dayton: Bryan
College, 1990.
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