100 Years Since The Scopes (Monkey) Trial: How Much Has Changed Since America's "Trial Of The Century"?

Who gets to decide what children are taught in school? This politically charged question may resonate with many public debates today concerning contentious topics such as gender, sexuality, or climate change, but it is far from being a new problem. In fact, this year marks the centenary of what is probably the most (in)famous response to this question, which played out as a public spectacle for audiences across the United States. It was dramatic, it was controversial, and it brought to American audiences a question some still ask today: Should schools be allowed to teach human evolution?   

I am, of course, talking about the famous Scopes (Monkey) trial that is familiar to many Americans today. But it seems that despite it being recognizable to many people, the true details of the case are often overlooked. So, this is a great time to revisit what has been called “the Trial of the Century” and what it represents today. 

The drama of the age

Let me set the stage for the story. It was a complex time in American culture. The country had recovered from the downturn following the First World War and had emerged into the “Roaring Twenties”, a time of unequal economic gains where automobile production, the construction industry, and the creation of new electrical appliances boomed. The jazz scene was starting to flourish and the Harlem Renaissance was in full swing. 

At the same time, more conservative elements were also gaining power. Congress had passed strict immigration quotas built on fears that “foreign” influences were destabilizing “traditional” life (sound familiar?). There was a deep isolationist sentiment in the air that increasingly turned away from international entanglements while also becoming distrustful of intellectualism, international cooperation, and radical ideas. Within the Midwest and the South, the Ku Klux Klan was also reaching its political zenith, boasting somewhere between 2.5 and 4 million members and promoting its fiery brand of white supremacy, nativism, and Prohibition enforcement.

It was within this heady mix of cultural, political, and economic forces that the Scopes Trial took place, and in many ways they all contributed to its significance. The USA was changing, and that led conservative forces to decry what they saw as an accompanying moral crisis. For the influential hardline Christians, much of the problem stemmed from a failure to take the Bible seriously. Importantly, they believed that certain scientific ideas, such as the Theory of Evolution, had introduced a kind of moral relativism into society, which was the root of many issues. 

No one cared whether Scopes was guilty or not.

Randy Moore, Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota

According to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, humans and apes once shared a common ancestor that they subsequently evolved from over millions of years. Of course, this flies in the face of the idea that humans were created fully developed by God. 

This was not a new intellectual development; the idea had been floating around most of the world since Darwin published his On The Origin of Species in 1859. But what they lacked in timeliness, the fundamentalist Christians made up for in outrage and fervor. In particular, the World Christian Fundamentals Association (WCFA), also known as the Fundamentalist League, which was established in 1919, began a campaign to uphold biblical literalism and to challenge the perceived evils of modernism. Darwinism, they argued, not only threatened literal interpretations of the Bible, but also eroded moral values. As such, the most vulnerable members of society, children, should not be exposed to it. 

Through the lobbying power of their Bible Conferences, which helped galvanize support for anti-evolution sentiment, the group succeeded in getting the Tennessee state legislature to introduce the Butler Act in March 1925, banning the teaching of human evolution in public schools. The act also inspired similar legislation in other states.  

At this point in the story, tradition holds that an innocent science teacher named John Scopes, defiant of this law, persevered in teaching Darwinism to his students and was eventually put on trial for his audacity. However, the truth is more complex than that. Instead, Scopes was a willing volunteer in what turned out to be a show trial initially intended as a publicity stunt for the small town of Dayton, Tennessee. 

None of these businessmen were activists about evolution, pro or con, but they were activists for Dayton.

Randy Moore

“A few years before the trial, it was a coal-based town reliant on the Dayton Coal & Iron Company”, Randy Moore, Emeritus Professor of Biology at the University of Minnesota, told IFLScience. “It went bankrupt, and Dayton’s economy crumbled.”

But the drama caused by the law banning human evolution from schools represented an opportunity for revival, at least in the eyes of some canny local businessmen. 

“There was a group of businessmen who would meet every day at a drugstore to gossip and solve the world's problems, and inevitably, talk about what they could do to revitalize the economy of Dayton. None of these businessmen were activists about evolution, pro or con, but they were activists for Dayton.”

According to Moore, the businessmen capitalized on the “hubbub” surrounding Tennessee’s ban by organizing the show trial, knowing that it would be a public spectacle to draw in visitors. 

“They'll have to stay somewhere. They'll eat, and maybe we can show them why they should move to Dayton and invest in Dayton,” Moore ventriloquized. 

Although the businessmen had a plan of action, they still lacked one important thing: someone willing to say they’d violated the law. At first, they asked a full-time biology teacher, but they refused. So, they turned to John Scopes, a substitute biology teacher hired in April that year who was also teaching sports. Scopes became their man; all they needed now was someone to represent the prosecution and the defense. 

For their part, the Christian fundamentalists managed to convince a famous politician and religious leader, William Jennings Bryan, to prosecute Scopes. Bryan was, at this point, a three-time Democratic presidential candidate and a populist who saw an opportunity to reassert his relevance in America’s moral and political life. Although he certainly shared some of the Fundamentalists' views, he was not really a Biblical literalist, accepting neither the young Earth idea nor the 6-day creation interpretation. 

When he received the wire asking him to take part in the trial, Bryan replied: 

“I shall be pleased to act for your great religious organizations and without compensation assist in the enforcement of the Tennessee law provided of course it is agreeable to the Law Department of the State.”

In response to this appointment, the defense persuaded Clarence Darrow, a famous defense attorney, as the ideological counterweight to Bryan. If the latter was meant to represent the traditional and populist religious views of rural America, then the former was the voice of scientific rationalism, secular modernism, and individual liberty. But like Bryan, Darrow wasn’t necessarily interested in the evolution debate per se; however, he was very much anti-fundamentalist and, above all, anti-Bryan. 

Darrow, Moore explained “came to Dayton to get Bryan”.

It was all these forces that came together to turn the Scopes trial into a courtroom sensation. Far from being a legitimate titanic clash between modern science and the influence of traditional faith, the whole event was a showcase for these sentiments, personal opportunism, local enrichment and public spectacle. Ultimately Scopes was found guilty of his alleged offence and was fined $100. However, his conviction was later overturned on a technicality by the Tennessee Supreme Court.

The Scopes legacy: It just gets messier  

As is probably obvious at this point, the Scopes trial was a much messier affair than has often been remembered. Today, the trial, sometimes referred to as the “Monkey” trial (because of the question of human evolution), has been remembered as a crucial moment in American history. According to this interpretation, it helped solidify the idea that there should be a separation between the teaching of theology and science in schools. But was this really the case? 

In 1925, the leading scientists in this country were rabid eugenicists, and every one of them invoked evolution as the justification for eugenics.

Randy Moore

“No one cared whether Scopes was guilty or not,” Moore said. “There were four to five times more stories about personality and side shows” in the newspapers covering the trial. People “wanted to see Bryan and Darrow” and “no one was interested in the science stuff”. 

The Butler Act remained in effect for another 42 years following the trial and the word “evolution” mostly disappeared from biological textbooks in the US for around two decades. For the most part, it seems the trial itself had faded into the background of popular memory until the release of the film Inherit the Wind in 1960, which was based on the events of the trial.

There is another aspect of the Scopes Trial that is often overlooked in popular discussions, and it’s a much thornier aspect. On the one hand, the whole thing could be characterized as a battle between religion and science, of the old against the new, of conservatism and enlightenment. But that is a gross simplification and actually misses a vital point about the science of the time. This was not just an argument about human evolution as fact, but about a far more controversial strain of early 20th century science: eugenics.

At this time, many scientists in the United States were pro-eugenics and for some, the theory of evolution was a “scientific” way to prove their otherwise racial beliefs.

“In 1925, the leading scientists in this country were rabid eugenicists, and every one of them invoked evolution as the justification for eugenics,” Moore said.

“If you wanted the experts to testify about evolution at the trial, you would have gotten a package deal. In other words, several experts at Dayton were eugenicists.”

Ultimately, the scientists were not allowed to testify at the trial as the judge decided that this was not really a question about evolution per se but whether Scopes broke the law. But regardless, it seems the public were not really interested in the finer scientific debates taking place at the time, so the platform these eugenicists wanted did not achieve their hopes of broadcasting their views to wider audiences. Nevertheless, the whole situation demonstrates just how tricky history can be.

Today, the question of whether evolution should be taught in schools is still being debated in certain parts of the United States. There and elsewhere, debates over issues like global warming, gender, and sex education have also become focal points of reactionary outrage for similar reasons: that teaching these topics to children endangers their innocence or morality, or contravenes biblical narratives. But who gets to decide what children should learn?

“There are important issues that people need to take a stand on”, Moore explained. “I don't mean to sound like John Scopes, but people need to be able to think for themselves, learn lots of different ideas, even some that they and others may disagree with. Don't infringe on other people's rights to learn what they want.”

It would be nice to think that, in a hundred years’ time, people will look back on the debates of today and feel like we offered a sound and resounding answer this time. Unfortunately, history may well continue repeating itself, ad nauseam.