- July 10-25, 1925
Captured the world's attention in July, 1925
"Rationalists challenge a Tennessee law forbidding the teaching of evolution"
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The Scopes 'Monkey Trial'
- July 10-25, 1925 Captured the world's attention in July, 1925 "Rationalists challenge a Tennessee law forbidding the teaching of evolution" |
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THE CAST:
Clarence Darrow,
v.s.
John T. Scopes, a 24-year old science teacher and football coach |
Clarence Darrow |
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Later came the jury, whose time has been hanging heavy since they have been barred from the court room while counsel argued abstractions of law. They had got tired of listening to the proceedings over the radio loud-speaker on the Court House lawn. They were led to the "monkey house" by Captain Jack Thompson, the juror who looks like Buffalo Bill, and who waved nearly all of Dayton's small boys out of the way as he entered the doorway. MISSING LINK FROM VERMONT The "missing link" is Jo Viens, formerly of Burlington, Vt., where it was said, he was once mascot for the Burlington Fire Department. He is a man, 51 years old, three and one-half feet tall, has a receding forehead and a protruding jaw not unlike a simians's, and a peculiar shuffling walk which is described as that of an anthropoid, and Mr. Nye asserted he was and example of how men "may go down now even as he went down ages ago into the anthropoid." ...Regardless, however of Dayton's resentment toward the chimpanzee as an alleged ancestor, the small children of the town took a fancy to Joe Mendi [the monkey] ...on the front lawn. Movie cameramen...took pictures of Joe, wearing a plaid suit, a brown fedora and white spats, right in the yard of F. E. Robinson, who, besides owning the drugstore "where it started," also is President of the School Board.
DAYTON, Tenn. July 13 - Rhea County's court room, the second largest in the State, a room sixty feet square and seating more than 300 persons, was filled again today at the second
session of the case of the State of Tennessee vs. John Thomas Scopes for teaching evolution.
Bryan and Darrow Exchange Gifts of Carved Monkeys DAYTON, Tenn. July 15. - William J. Bryan and Clarence Darrow, Fundamentalist and agnostic, antagonists in the Scopes trial, exchanged courtesies in the Rhea County courtroom today at the end of the day's session.
Mr. Bryan went to Mr. Darrow in front of the bench with the image
of a monkey in his hand. He was smiling.
A friend of mine sent me this and asked me to give it to you," he said. "It's carved from a peach pit, and it's so pretty I'd like you to keep it." "I'm glad to have it," said Mr. Darrow, also smiling, as he took the gift. "I have one almost like it, and I'll give it to you in exchange." |
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William Jennings Bryan |
In Memoriam W.J.B. in Prejudices, 5th Series, H.L.Mencken describes William Jennings Bryan at the trial:
"...But that was the last touch of amiability that I was destined to see in Bryan. The next day the
battle joined and his face became hard. By the end of the week he was simply a walking fever.
Hour by hour he grew more bitter. What the Christian Scientists call malicious animal magnetism seemed to
radiate from him like heat from a stove. From my place in the courtroom, standing upon a table,
I looked directly down upon him, sweating horribly and pumping his palm
leaf fan. His eyes fascinated me; I watched them all day long. They were
blazing points of hatred. They glittered like occult and sinister
gems. Now and then they wandered to me, and I got my share, for my reports of the trial had come back to Dayton, and he had
read them. It was like coming under fire.
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EUROPE IS AMAZED BY THE SCOPES CASE
(July 11, 1925) The Rev. Frank Ballard, Christian Evidence lecturer for the Wesleyan
conference, writes:
"The assumptions of fundamentalism are so preposterous...it is pitifully manifest that
both the science and theology of many of those posing as authorities are half
a century behind the times. The notion of the Judge's charge to the Grand Jury beginning
with the reading of the First Chapter of Genesis as an account of creation which Tennessee teachers must adopt
savors of the sixteenth rather than the twentieth century."
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FRENCH SATIRIZE THE CASE PARISJuly 13, 1925 While there has been no discussion of the issues involved, the French press is following closely the developments in the Dayton case and occasionally bursts out into cynical observations on the subject.
The Paris Soir this evening, describing the case as one which will decide whether
"a monkey or Adam was the grandfather of Uncle Sam," writes:
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EPILOGUE
Only five days after the trial ended, Bryan lay down for a Sunday afternoon nap and never woke up. His lifelong diabetes and gluttonous eating habits had finally taken their toll.
The trial itself melted into insignificance when more than a year later, on January 14, 1927, the State Supreme Court in Nashville handed down a decision which reversed the earlier one. However, the court's decision stemmed from the very point Darrow sought to avoid - a technicality. By Tennessee state law, the jury, not the judge, must set the fine if it is above $50. The Butler Law, then, stood untested. The image of Fundamentalism, however, was irrevocably tarnished. They had proven themselves to be the "yokels, bigots, and rubes" the press had called them.
Even today, there are people who deny the fact that all life is connected, and that humans are just part of the equation. Fundamentalist insistence on the literal verity of scripture is grounded in a lack of faith, and inability to see a bigger picture. There are, of course, many "good Christians" who accept the Genesis account of creation as what it is, a metaphor.
Clarence Darrow said: "Science gets to the end of its knowledge and, in effect, says, 'I do not know what I do not know,' and keeps on searching. Religion gets to the end of its knowledge, and in effect, says, 'I know what I do not know,' and stops searching.
Genesis says the world was created in six days. It also says that Adam lived 930 years (Gen 5:5), and that Noah was 600 years old when the flood happened (Gen 7:6). We can take these figures literally, believing that "people just lived longer in those days," or if we have a shred of intelligence or honesty, we can surmise that Biblical time reckoning is on a metaphoric scale. Of course, this allows Genesis to agree with observed evolution.
PRIMARY SOURCE materials are letters, diaries, manuscripts, trial transcripts, photographs, eyewitness accounts, etc. SECONDARY SOURCE materials are books, newspaper articles, microfilm, documentary video, etc.
TERTIARY SOURCE materials are student essays, webpages, gossip, pulp magazine articles, etc.
About Citing This Page as A Source
This webpage is a tertiary source, compiled from secondary sources, as noted below. Citing this page as a source lacks credibility, frankly; if You want to impress your professor, I suggest you refer to secondary or primary sources. Some good ones are listed below. I do not broadcast my full name because of the controversial nature of some of my material. This page is my own report, and my sources are listed below. It was made as a pointer for those interested in doing deeper research from microfilmed newspapers, and books, to hopefully glean a deeper understanding of this interesting bit of history.
To cite this page as a source, please credit: Borndigital, Curator, and provide this url: http://www.borndigital.com/scopes.htm . The material used in this exhibit consists of direct quotes and scanned headlines from the New York Times, or Stone's biography. I have paraphrased in the lead-in to the trial transcripts, and in the Epilogue.
This page was first mounted in 1995. It began as a prototype for an alternative web-presentation format, and evolved into an historical exhibit.
sources:
"Clarence Darrow for the Defense," a biography by Irving Stone, Doubleday & Company, Garden City, New York, 1941
"Prejudices, 5th Series," H. L. Mencken. New York, A. A. Knopf - 1926.
The New York Times, July 10 through 25th, 1925
Bible Contradictions
Lyall Watson's Lifetide - The Origins Of Life On earth
Fundamentalist's Flat Earth
Debunking Fundamentalism
The Spanish Inquisition
The Founding Fathers Were NOT Christians
Saul of Tarsus, Cults of Mithras, and Christ's Blood
