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The Monkey Trial PLUS A Closer Look at Hollywood's Inherit the Wind |
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Click here to e-mail any comments, corrections, or suggestions. Thanks! |
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The
Movie: |
The
Facts: |
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The statements under this column are either contained in or strongly
implied by the popular play and movie Inherit the
Wind (1955 and 1960, respectively). Because of the influence of this play
and movie
(see over 35 video clips from the movie below), reading down just this
left-hand column will strike most people as a fairly accurate (or at
least familiar) synopsis of the famous Scopes “Monkey Trial.” |
The statements under this column contain information of a more factual
nature relating to the actual trial of the State of Tennessee v. John Thomas
Scopes (1925). To purchase a best-selling, word-for-word copy of the actual trial transcript in electronic (downloadable and searchable) form, click here. It's a very fun and educational read!! Included is the undelivered closing argument of William Jennings Bryan. |
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Once upon a time, the State of |
In 1925 the This fact bears repeating: The Tennessee legislature
did not outlaw the teaching of evolution but for one drop in
a very large bucket. To suggest, therefore, that entire fields of academic
study such as astronomy, botany, anatomy, geology, biology, etc., were
dealt a death blow in the Volunteer State is highly inaccurate. The statute was supported by a large majority of |
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The |
The intent of the Butler Act was not to favor Christianity over evolution
but to put the two prevailing theories on a level playing field of silence. The supporters of the Butler Act did not
advocate teaching the Bible in the public schools (which they believed to be
impermissible) and so they naturally felt powerless as a competing theory
(Darwinian evolution) could be freely taught in opposition to the silenced
story of creation contained in the book of Genesis. |
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Violation of the statute (the Butler Act) was punishable by fine and/or imprisonment. |
The Butler Act provided only for a fine from $100 to $500 (same as
bootlegging) and there was no provision in the Act for any jail time. |
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At the time that the anti-evolution statute was passed, the biology
textbook used in the |
The biology textbook used in The reason for this proposed truce of silence regarding mankind is discussed
below and provides an insight into the curious title of Hunter's text— |
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John Scopes (“Bertram Cates” in Inherit
the Wind), a young and earnest high school biology teacher in |
John Scopes, a high school football coach and mathematics
teacher who only substituted
for Dayton’s regular biology teacher, never
taught evolution to anybody. As he confided to acclaimed newspaper reporter,
William K. Hutchinson, “I didn’t violate the
law. . . . I never taught that evolution lesson. Those kids they put on the stand couldn’t remember what I taught them three months ago. They were coached by the lawyers.” Although not actually guilty of the alleged crime, Scopes cooperated in
a clever and friendly plan to test the constitutionality of the Butler
Act. The ACLU in Far from being arrested by hostile henchmen, Scopes
was arrested by his friend, Sue Hicks, the City Attorney of Dayton (and
the original “boy
named Sue” of Johnny Cash fame).
In his autobiography, Center
of the Storm (1960), John Scopes always put quotation marks
around the word “arrest” to highlight its voluntary character. The trial could not properly be called a witch hunt,
one trial historian notes, because “the accused [Scopes] and his defenders—the
‘witches’—were actually the hunters, stalking
the law with the intent of overturning it or at least making it unenforceable.”
de Sprague, The Great
Monkey Trial (1968), p. 490. |
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After his arrest, Scopes was put in jail where he was hit in the head by
a bottle thrown through the window of his cell, burned in effigy, threatened
with being lynched from a “sour apple tree,” and
generally made to fear for his life.
This fear was all the more regrettable because it was inspired by the
very townspeople Scopes had grown up
with all his life. Click here
for a video clip from ITW. |
In part because he was a quiet, likable person and in part, perhaps,
because he was the coach of their winning
high school football team, John Scopes was well-liked by the people of Dayton. Scopes was never jailed for a moment (he violated a
misdemeanor statute, recall,
not a felony), never
faced the prospect of jail, and was welcome in |
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Alone and afraid, Scopes was unrepresented by counsel up to the day
before his trial. He had written a
newspaper in |
From the very onset of the case which he himself helped instigate, John
Scopes unquestionably enjoyed the best legal defense team ever assembled
for a misdemeanor trial in the history of the In contrast, the Prosecution made do with local representation
of no particular distinction and no national reputation whatsoever.
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Bryan strenuously opposed the
teaching of evolution in the public schools. |
Bryan did not
oppose the teaching of evolution in public schools.
For a number of reasons noted below he did oppose teaching the evolution of mankind (one species) as scientific
fact and especially in the manner in which evolutionary theory was
practically being applied in his day. As Bryan wrote in the New York Times:
Specifically—and this is very important to
understanding both the Butler Act and the trial— The above teachings were favorably referred to as “eugenics”—a term invented by Darwin’s
cousin, Sir Francis Galton—and generally pertain to
the active management of the gene pool of the human species by the more
evolved over the less evolved. Statutes permitting sterilizations by force, laws
forbidding marriages between people of different races (miscegenation),
immigration quotas favoring Northern Europeans (Caucasians), and economic
policies benefiting the most successful capitalists, were all popular
policies advanced by elitists (university professors, industrialists, Planned
Parenthood, liberal ministers, etc.) who self-consciously and persuasively
invoked the “scientific” principles of Darwinism. Despite vocal opposition primarily from The majority
of the scientists called by the Defense to testify on behalf of John Scopes
in 1925, in fact, belonged to eugenic societies—organizations
now regarded as no less (and perhaps more)
reprehensible than the dreaded KKK. |
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No intellectual or other person of decency and goodwill could reasonably
oppose the teaching of evolution in the public schools. |
As noted above, |
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Christian fundamentalists like William Jennings |
The
Fundamentals, a collection of 12 books published in from 1905 to 1915, sets forth the
“fundamentals” of the Christian faith (such
as the Virgin Birth, the Deity of Christ, etc.). The
Fundamentals discuss the creation of the world but present several
theories as orthodox, including the view that creation took place over
millions of years and that the “days” of Genesis are actually epochs of
time. (See Gen. 2:4 where the word “day”
is used to mean an indefinite period of time.) Not all fundamentalists, therefore, held to a 6-day
creation and Bryan himself, as it turns out, did not believe in a literal
6-day creation (!). (See more
discussion of Bryan’s testimony during the
trial regarding his view of creation and the age of the earth below.) |
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Unlike most intellectuals, the people of rural |
Of course each person is entitled to his own views on such a proposition,
but of considerable relevance to the Scopes trial, at least, we have
the perspective of John Scopes himself as he relates in his autobiography,
Center
of the Storm: “I have often said that there is more intolerance
in higher education than in all the mountains of Tennessee.” (p.
276). |
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Once in town, |
John Scopes himself, to cite again the Defendant as especially relevant
to this trial, called Bryan was a three-time presidential candidate for
the Democratic Party (including being the youngest nominee of any party in US
history), a two-time congressman, a Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson,
a driving force behind four different constitutional amendments (income tax, woman’s suffrage, direct election of senators, and
prohibition) as well as an influential proponent for the establishment of the
federal department of health, education and welfare. Too left-leaning politically to be electable (so much for being a conservative!), Bryan was
a great supporter of trust busting, labor unions, higher taxes, government
schooling, federal regulations of every sort, and strict government
control (if not ownership) of many key industries.
He was also a principled pacifist and so he resigned from being
Secretary of State when President Wilson determined (prematurely, thought
All these political positions made Bryan is also still regarded
as one of the greatest (if not the greatest) orators in American history. On the famous Chautauqua speaking circuit,
he was second in popularity only to Helen Keller. Even up until his death at the age of 65,
his outdoor Sunday School lectures were attended each week by over 5,000
people and he was the editor of a newspaper as well as the author of
a popular syndicated column on Bible topics that appeared in over 100
papers each week. Although certainly no fan of In
personality he was forceful, energetic, and opinionated but genial, kindly,
generous, likable and charming. . . . Although an intellectual absolutist—a black and white thinker—he
showed a praiseworthy tolerance towards those who disagreed with him. (p. 36) |
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H.L. Mencken (“E.K. Hornbeck” in Inherit
the Wind), an editorialist from the |
Editorialist H.L. Mencken is one of the most fascinating and entertaining
characters connected with the Scopes trial.
A small-government, anti-FDR, anti-public-school libertarian
(not to be confused with the pro-government, pro-FDR, and pro-public-school
liberals of today), he was also intensely anti-Christian and
given to exaggeration and lies of the most ridiculous and often hilarious
sort. This ridiculousness and hilarity, however,
could be vicious and often was. Because
of both his libertarian politics and antipathy to religion, Mencken
genuinely hated the Christian populist It
was hard to believe, watching him at Mencken's obituary of Bryan
is even more scathing, but the popular reporter seems to have had his
own moral shortcomings. He believed,
for instance, that the Jews were “the most unpleasant race ever heard
of,” and that their unpleasantness was, in large part, responsible
for the mass resentment that put the Nazis in power (The
Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken
by Terry Teachout (2002), p. 268). Commenting upon the Mencken character in Inherit the Wind, Prof. Alan Dershowitz
of |
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Bryan had a poor understanding
of evolution. He even had the
annoying habit (whether out of sheer ignorance or on purpose is not
clear) of pronouncing “evolution” as “evil-ution.” |
Because he had taken the time to know both sides of the issues, Bryan had
a very good understanding of evolution and publicly debated in the pages
of the New York Times with
such evolutionary experts as the president of the American Museum of
Natural History, Henry
Fairfield Osborn. It may be impossible to gauge Bryan's understanding
of evolution compared to other participants at the Scopes trial but
it seems worth pointing out that several of the Defense attorneys and
the only scientist to give verbal testimony at the trial, Prof. Maynard
M. Metcalf, all mistake simple “change over time” (which is not disputed
by creationists or anyone else) with “evolution” of the sort
that can explain the emergence of new and increasingly complicated species
from the first single cell by means of natural processes only. The attorneys and scientists alike even site the development
of a fertilized egg into an adult animal as evidence of evolution (which
it emphatically is not because,
among other things, this development occurs within the life span of
the very same animal at issue and, secondly, the fertilized egg already
has 100% of the genetic information it needs to mature and thus no new
developmental evolution is occurring merely by virtue of this maturation
process). For enlightening quotations in this regard,
see pp. 116 (Malone), 136 (Dr. Metcalf), 156 (Hays), and 189 (Darrow)
of the trial transcript. Dr. Metcalf’s
single-sentence definition of evolution given from the stand (take a deep
breath!) contains the egg-to-adult misdirection common among evolutionists at
the trial: Evolution,
I think, means change; in the final analysis I think it means the change of
an organism from one character into a different character, and by character I
mean its structure, or its behavior, or its function, or its method of development from the egg or anything else—the
change of an organism from one set characteristic which characterizes it into
a different condition, characterized by a different set of characteristics
either structural or functional could be properly called, I think, evolution—to be the evolution of that organism; but the
term in general means the whole series of such changes which have taken place
during hundreds of millions of years which have produced from lowly
beginnings the nature of which is not by any means fully understood to
organisms of a much more complex character, whose structure and functions we
are still studying, because we haven’t begun to
learn what we need to know about them.
(p. 139-140 of the trial transcript) H.L. Mencken—this time presumably
not attempting to be humorous—called Dr. Metcalf’s testimony “one of the clearest, most succinct
and withal most eloquent presentations of the case for the evolutionists
that I have ever heard . . . . The
doctor was never at a loss for a word, and his ideas flowed freely and
smoothly.” Bryan knew that
evolution was not the development of a fertilized egg into an
adult. He knew that evolutionists could not account for the first living
cell in contradiction of the law of biogenesis. He knew that the fossil
record had yielded no convincing transitional forms and suspected that
many hominid fossils were probably fraudulent (which turned out to be
true). He also knew that the theory (rightly or wrongly) was being widely
used to denigrate the veracity of the Bible and justify practices that
later became synonymous with the worst evils of |
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Bryan was greeted
upon his arrival with a big parade led by belligerent, hard-faced Christians
singing what might be best described as “hate hymns.” Click here
for a video clip from ITW. The last-minute
arrival of Clarence Darrow (“Henry Drummond” in Inherit the Wind), the world-famous atheist and criminal defense
attorney, was ignored. Click
here
for a video clip from ITW. |
Bryan arrived to
much fanfare at the Far from acrimonious,
the trial began with excitement, expectation, and mutual good will.
Even the cynical and ever-irreverent Mencken had the following
backhanded (and thoroughly racist) “compliments” to give in his first
report from The town, I confess,
greatly surprised me. I expected
to find a squalid Southern village with darkies snoozing on the horse
blocks, pigs rooting under the houses, and the inhabitants full of hookworm
and malaria. What I found was
a country town full of charm and even beauty . . . . Nor is there any
evidence in the town of that poisonous spirit which usually shows itself
when Christian men gather to defend the great doctrines of their faith. I have heard absolutely no whisper that Scopes
is in the pay of the Jesuits, or that the whisky trust is backing him,
or that he is egged on by the Jews who manufacture lascivious moving
pictures. On the contrary, the
Evolutionists and the Anti-Evolutionists seem to be on the best of terms,
and it is hard in a group to distinguish one from another. |
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Notwithstanding
his dull intellect and simplistic fundamentalism, |
While Also, as was mentioned
above, Bryan and the Finally, it may
be worth mentioning that |
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Clarence Darrow’s goal in |
Taking these assertions
in reverse order, we have reason to question any claim of Christianity's
“reigning hegemony.” It is commonly
assumed—mistakenly—that the biology textbooks
in Taken at his word,
the objectives of Also taken at his
word, Darrow plainly stated, “We have the purpose of preventing bigots
and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the It might be most accurate to
say that if it were Darrow’s goal in |
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The religious community
of |
In 1925, only about
half of the citizens of |
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The people of |
The people of Darrow himself
said in open court: [A]nd so far as the people of Tennessee are concerned . . .
I don’t know as I was ever in a community
in my life where my religious ideas differed as widely from the great
mass as I have found them since I have been in Tennessee. Yet I came here a perfect stranger and I can
say what I have said before, that I have not found upon anybody’s part—any citizen here
in this town or outside—the slightest discourtesy. I have been treated better, kindlier and
more hospitably than I fancied would have been the case in the North,
and that is due largely to the ideas that southern people have and they
are, perhaps, more hospitable than we are up North. (pp. 225-6 of the trial
transcript) |
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Rather than being
a disciplined and abstemious Christian (as he presumably preached),
Bryan himself was a belching glutton.
Darrow, on the other hand, was moderate and simple in his appetites. Click here
for a video clip from ITW. |
Bryan had a large
appetite due, perhaps, to his being a diabetic. He was considered by observers of the trial,
however, to be in good health and, at about 230 lbs. (judging from photographs
taken at the trial), was certainly not obese. |
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Bryan was, for
all practical purposes, the lead attorney for the Prosecution at the
trial as well as a show-boater and a nonstop talker. Click here
for a video clip from ITW. |
Bryan was invited
to participate as an assistant
prosecutor, not the lead prosecutor for the State of In re-reading the
original trial transcript, one strongly suspects Darrow’s de facto “closing argument” was, by design, delivered at the
end of the second day of the trial, p.74 ff. In later writings he admitted
that denying Bryan the opportunity to deliver his closing argument was
an important part of the defense’s strategy. This strategy is also, of course, an implicit
recognition by Darrow that—for whatever reasons, noble or otherwise, creative or cowardly—he did not prefer to go head-to-head with the Great Commoner
in a battle of pure oratory on the legality and appropriateness of the
Butler Act. |
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In a gesture politically
motivated by the sleazy and groveling Mayor of Dayton, |
The title “Colonel”
was a courtesy title used for all attorneys in Tennessee just as the
title “General” was a courtesy title used for all attorneys general. At the Scopes trial, therefore, the title
of “Colonel” is used over 100 times.
The first six times occur when the Judge addresses Darrow as “Colonel”
(not Bryan), and the next five times occur when one of Bryan’s fellow assistant prosecutors also refers to Darrow
by the same title. All the attorneys
in the trial on both sides were referred to by these courtesy titles
as appropriate. But it gets even
better: Ironically, |
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At the end of the
first day in court, the Judge read an announcement from the bench advertising
a prayer meeting to be lead by Dayton’s anti-evolutionist minister, the fundamentalist
Rev. Jeremiah Brown. This announcement, understandably, was hotly
objected to by Darrow for its “commercial” content. Click here
for a video clip from ITW. |
There was no Reverend
Jeremiah Brown in What actually was objected to by Darrow at the trial
was not the announcement of a prayer meeting led by a fundamentalist
minister outside of court, but a prayer offered by the Court itself in opening each day’s session
much like the Supreme Court and Congress open each day’s
session with prayer today. Darrow
in his own defense noted that, by the Court's own admission, this practice
had not been consistently applied in the Judge’s
courtroom in the past and that, under the circumstances of the present
case, it was prejudicial to his client. The Judge finally
explained that he had opened court in prayer on numerous instances in
the past whenever a minister was available.
In deference to concerns raised by the Defense, however, he did
turn the selection of ministers
for the opening prayer over to the local Pastor’s
Association. This suggestion
was met with some amusement as it was assumed that the Association was
thoroughly fundamentalist and would select ministers accordingly. The next day and thereafter, however, names
presented for giving the opening prayer included a Rabbi as well as
prominent modernist (non-fundamentalist) ministers. The ACLU in Later in the trial, the proceedings were moved outside on the Courthouse lawn. There the Defense objected to a large sign posted on the Courthouse wall that read, “Read Your Bible!” Again the Prosecution asked what the problem was since the Defense was alleging that evolution is consistent with the bible. It was Bryan, however, who concluded that “if leaving that [sign] up there during the trial makes our brother to offend, I would take it down during the trial.” (p. 282 of the of the trial transcript) The Judge agreed with Bryan and the sign was removed. |
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At a dark and menacing
prayer meeting led by Jeremiah Brown, the Reverend called upon God to
strike down Scopes for his belief in evolution and prayed that his soul
be consigned to hell. When the
minister’s own daughter
tearfully objected to such a harsh condemnation of her fiancé (Scopes), he (the minister) fanatically
invoked the same wrath of God upon his daughter “though she be blood
of my blood and flesh of my flesh.”
Click here
for a video clip from ITW. |
There was no such
minister in There is also no
Christian doctrine which equates a belief in evolution with sin. |
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Bryan was disingenuous
about his faith in God and the Bible. He privately
believed that the common people simply needed “something to believe
in” and that, even if not exactly true, Christianity fills that purpose. Darrow, in contrast, thought that the truth,
however discomforting, was better than an opiate lie. Click here
for a video clip from ITW. |
Bryan believed
in God and the Bible and it has never been suggested (outside of Inherit the Wind) that this belief was
an accommodation to people to whom |
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Mencken commented
to Scopes during the trial that |
The description
of a man being able to “strut sitting down” was made by a newspaperman
about Bainbridge Colby, a prominent |
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Bryan called Scopes’s
fiancée, Rachel, as a surprise witness to the stand. She
was horrified for, in a moment of great vulnerability the evening before,
she had confided in |
Scopes had no fiancée
or even girlfriend in |
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When it came time
for the Defense to call its first witness—an
eminent scientist—the Prosecution objected,
vehemently opposing any expert testimony on the subject of evolution. But, as Darrow countered, how could the jury
fairly convict Scopes for teaching “evolution” if they had no real understanding
of the term? Bryan clearly feared
a confrontation with any viewpoint different from his own.
Click here
for a video clip from ITW. |
The testimony of
one scientist (Dr. Maynard M. Metcalf) was taken for nearly two hours
on the fourth day of the trial. On
the following day, a Motion was made by the Prosecution to deny further
scientific testimony as irrelevant.
Thereafter commenced a series of crucial speeches arguing in
favor of more scientific testimony (by the Defense) and, in opposition,
that scientific testimony was irrelevant to the simple factual question
of whether or not Scopes had taught evolution to his students. In his written
opinion, the Judge ruled against the admission of scientific testimony
as irrelevant to the basic charge that would go before the jury. This ruling, while damaging to the prospects
of the trial as a source of entertainment and even scientific instruction,
was nevertheless considered to be legally sound and was supported not
only on appeal but by such pro-Defense editorial voices as the New York Times and the Chattanooga Times. |