The issue of teaching scientific based Darwinian evolution as opposed to teaching Creationism and its offspring, Intelligent Design—a Christian religious doctrine—as science in public schools has spawned several historic law suits. Given the current tendency to insist on evidence as opposed to feeling in the courts, it is of interest to consider a short review of the landmark cases about such public school instruction.
- Tennessee v. John Scopes
Popularly known as the “Monkey Trial”.
Dates of the Trial: July 10, 1925 to August 2, 1925
Judge: John T. Raulston
For the prosecution: William Jennings Bryan, William Jennings Bryan, Jr., A.T. Stewart, Ben B. McKenzie. Of these, Stewart and McKenzie were former attorneys general for Eastern Tennessee.
For the defense: Clarence Darrow, Arthur Garfield Hays, prominent free speech advocate, Dudley Field Malone, international divorce attorney.
Background:
The 1920s was a chaotic era for social patterns—traditionalists and older Victorians versus young modernists. William Jennings Bryan, three-time Democratic candidate for president and an ardent populist, led a fundamentalist crusade to banish Darwin’s Theory of Evolution from American classrooms because it would undermine traditional religious values. By 1925, he and his followers had succeeded in getting legislation introduced in 15 states to ban the teaching of evolution. In February of that year, John Butler introduced a bill in the Tennessee legislature making it “unlawful to teach any theory that denies the story of divine creation as taught by the Bible and to teach instead that man was descended from a lower order of animals” which was enacted handily.
In a meeting in Fred Robinson’s drugstore in Dayton, Tennessee, George Rappalyea showed friends a newspaper containing an ACLU announcement that it was willing to offer its services to anyone challenging the new statute. Rappalyea argued that staging such a trial would be a way to bring publicity and new income to their declining town. The conspirators approached John Scopes–a young general science teacher and part-time football coach–who agreed with the conspirators that it was not possible to teach biology without evolution. The class text book, Hunters Civic Biology, expressly contained evolutionary teachings and–acting as a part time fill-in teacher–Scopes had been giving out assignments on evolution to his students. Since that was against the new law, Scopes agreed to stand for a test case against the new anti-evolution statute.
After some argument, Clarence Darrow, who was not the first or even the second choice of the ACLU or the conspirators, was accepted to lead the defense team. The prosecution team was headed by William Jennings Bryan, the crusader, but who had not tried a case in over 30 years.
The trial was set for July 10, 1925 in the Rhea County Courthouse. The town of Dayton was taken up in a carnival atmosphere which included bringing in chimpanzees to testify, but had to settle for being displayed in a side-show on Main Street. There were banners, lemonade stands, Anti-evolution League members selling copies of TT Martin’s book, Hell and the High School, and holy rollers rolling in the surrounding hills and riverbanks. Judge Raulston–a staunch conservative Christian–attended a sermon by Bryan in the Dayton Methodist Church on the evening before the trial’s opening, in which the crusader attacked the defense strategy in the case. On opening day, a thousand people, with 300 standing, jammed the court house. The proceedings opened, over Darrow’s protest, with a prayer.
On the first business day, the defense moved to quash the criminal indictment on state and federal constitutional grounds in order to obtain an eventual declaration by the U.S. Supreme Court. As expected, the motion was denied. The prosecution opened its case by asking the court to take judicial notice of the Book of Genesis. During the trial, Darrow said that the anti-evolution law made the Bible, “the yardstick to measure every man’s intellect, to measure every man’s intelligence, to measure every man’s learning”. Students testified that they had indeed been taught that man had evolved from one-celled organisms. The prosecution rested its simple case after drugstore owner, Fred Thompson, testified that John Scopes had made a statement that he knew that, “any teacher in the state who was teaching Hunter’s Biology was violating the law”.
On July 16, the defense called its first witness, a prominent zoologist; the judge allowed part of the testimony to be heard, which evoked a long speech by Bryan. The defense responded that Bryan’s outburst was born of the same ignorance “which made it possible for theologians…to bring Old Galilee [Galileo] to trial”. Raulston ruled the zoologist’s testimony inadmissible. Darrow protested and earned himself a contempt finding, which was later dropped when Darrow apologized.
Because of the mass of people in the courtroom and fear that the floor might collapse, the trial was moved outside before a crowd of 5000. The defense read into the record, for the purpose of an appellate review, excerpts of the prepared statements of eight scientists and four experts on religion who had been prepared to testify. Defense attorney Hays requested that Bryan, the lead prosecution attorney, be sworn in to testify as an expert on the Bible. At first, Bryan contended that “everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there”. Later he conceded that rather than six literal days of creation, his impression was “that they were periods”. His testimony did not go well, and the withering defense questioning befuddled the old gentleman. The next day, Judge Raulston ruled that Bryan could not return to the stand, and that his previous testimony was to be stricken from the record.
Darrow asked the jury to return a verdict of guilty in order that the case might be appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court, and Bryan was thereby denied the opportunity for a grand summation, a speech he had labored over for weeks. The jury complied; John Scopes was found guilty, and Judge Raulston fined him $100. Six days later, as a complication of eating an enormous dinner, William Jennings Bryan died. A year later, the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Dayton court on a technicality. Since it was not on constitutional grounds, the case ended; there was no further action that could be taken. Of the 15 states with pending anti-evolution legislation in 1925, only 2 (Alabama and Mississippi) enacted the laws. It would be 43 years later in the Epperson v. Arkansas case before the substantive question would be tested.
Consequences:
Although both sides claimed victory, historians agreed that the traditionalists of the 1920s felt a tragic sense of irreparable loss; it was as if they had seen their gods tremble and die, and they felt as if they had given up the awe, fear, and comfort of living in a simple world in which gods made the rules, and all man had to do was to obey. Paul R. Conkin wrote that, “It was like the loss of a father.”