Unit 4 The Trial That Rocked the World

Lesson 4 


The Trial That Rocked the World 


John Scopes 


A buzz ran through the crowd as I took my place in the packed court on that sweltering July day in 1925. The counsel for my defense was the famous criminal lawyer Clarence Darrow. Leading counsel for the prosecution was William Jennings Bryan, the silver-tongued orator, three times Democratic nominee for President of the United States, and leader of the fundamentalist movement that had brought about my trial. 


A few weeks before I had been an unknown school-teacher in Dayton, a little town in the mountains of Tennessee. Now I was involved in a trial reported the world over. Seated in court, ready to testify on my behalf, were a dozen distinguished professors and scientists, led by Professor Kirtley Mather of Harvard University. More than 100 reporters were on hand, and even radio announcers, who for the first time in history were to broadcast a jury trial. "Don't worry, son, we'll show them a few tricks," Darrow had whispered, throwing a reassuring arm round my shoulder as we were waiting for the court to open. 


The case had erupted round my head not long after I arrived in Dayton as science master and football coach at the secondary school. For a number of years a clash had been building up between the fundamentalists and the modernists. The fundamentalists adhered to a literal interpretation of the Old Testament. The modernists, on the other hand, accepted the theory advanced by Charles Darwin—that all animal life, including monkeys and men, had evolved from a common ancestor. 


Fundamentalism was strong in Tennessee, and the state legislature had recently passed a law prohibiting the teaching of "any theory that denies the story of creation as taught in the Bible." The new law was aimed squarely at Darwin's theory of evolution. An engineer, George Rappelyea, used to argue with the local people against the law. During one such argument, Rappelyea said that nobody could teach biology without teaching evolution. Since I had been teaching biology, I was sent for. 


"Rappelyea is right," I told them. 


"Then you have been violating the law," one of them said. 


"So has every other teacher," I replied. "Evolution is explained in Hunter's Civic Biology, and that's our textbook." 


Rappelyea then made a suggestion. "Let's take this thing to court," he said, "and test the legality of it." 


When I was indicted on May 7, no one, least of all I, anticipated that my case would snowball into one of the most famous trials in U.S. history. The American Civil Liberties Union announced that it would take my case to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary to "establish that a teacher may tell the truth without being sent to jail." Then Bryan volunteered to assist the state in prosecuting me. Immediately the renowned lawyer Clarence Darrow offered his services to defend me. Ironically, I had not known Darrow before my trial but I had met Bryan when he had given a talk at my university. I admired him, although I did not agree with his views. 


By the time the trial began on July 10, our town of 1,500 people had taken on a circus atmosphere. The buildings along the main street were festooned with banners. The streets around the three-storey red brick law court sprouted with rickety stands selling hot dogs, religious books and watermelons. Evangelists set up tents to exhort the passersby. People from the surrounding hills, mostly fundamentalists, arrived to cheer Bryan against the "infidel outsiders." Among them was John Butler, who had drawn up the anti-evolution law. Butler was a 49-year-old farmer who before his election had never been out of his native county. 


The presiding judge was John Raulston, a florid-faced man who announced: "I'm jist a reg'lar mountaineer jedge." Bryan, ageing and paunchy, was assisted in his prosecution by his son, also a lawyer, and Tennessee's brilliant young attorney-general, Tom Stewart. Besides the shrewd 68-year-old Darrow, my counsel included the handsome and magnetic Dudley Field Malone, 43, and Arthur Garfield Hays, quiet, scholarly and steeped in the law. In a trial in which religion played a key role, Darrow was an agnostic, Malone a Catholic and Hays a Jew. My father had come from Kentucky to be with me for the trial. 


The judge called for a local minister to open the session with prayer, and the trial got under way. Of the 12 jurors, three had never read any book except the Bible. One couldn't read. As my father growled, "That's one hell of a jury!" 


After the preliminary sparring over legalities, Darrow got up to make his opening statement. "My friend the attorney-general says that John Scopes knows what he is here for," Darrow drawled. "I know what he is here for, too. He is here because ignorance and bigotry are rampant, and it is a mighty strong combination." 


Darrow walked slowly round the baking court. "Today it is the teachers," he continued, "and tomorrow the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until we are marching backwards to the glorious age of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted faggots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind." 


"That damned infidel," a woman whispered loudly as he finished his address. 


The following day the prosecution began calling witnesses against me. Two of my pupils testified, grinning shyly at me, that I had taught them evolution, but added that they had not been contaminated by the experience. Howard Morgan, a bright lad of 14, testified that I had taught that man was a mammal like cows, horses, dogs and cats. 


"He didn't say a cat was the same as a man?" Darrow asked. 


"No, sir," the youngster said. "He said man had reasoning power." 


"There is some doubt about that," Darrow snorted. 


After the evidence was completed, Bryan rose to address the jury. The issue was simple, he declared "The Christian believes that man came from above.  The evolutionist believes that he must have come from below." The spectators chuckled and Bryan warmed to his work. In one hand he brandished a biology text as he denounced the scientists who had come to Dayton to testify for the defense. 


"The Bible," he thundered in his sonorous organ tones, "is not going to be driven out of this court by experts who come hundreds of miles to testify that they can reconcile evolution, with its ancestors in the jungle, with man made by God in His image and put here for His purpose as part of a divine plan." 


As he finished, jaw out-thrust, eyes flashing, the audience burst into applause and shouts of "Amen." Yet something was lacking. Gone was the fierce fervor of the days when Bryan had swept the political arena like a prairie fire. The crowd seemed to feel that their champion had not scorched the infidels with the hot breath of his oratory as he should have. 


Dudley Field Malone popped up to reply. "Mr. Bryan is not the only one who has the right to speak for the Bible," he observed. "There are other people in this country who have given up their whole lives to God and religion.  Mr. Bryan, with passionate spirit and enthusiasm, has given most of his life to politics." Bryan sipped from a jug of water as Malone's voice grew in volume. He appealed for intellectual freedom, and accused Bryan of calling for a duel to the death between science and religion. 


"There is never a duel with the truth," he roared. "The truth always wins—and we are not afraid of it.  The truth does not need Mr. Bryan.  The truth is eternal, immortal and needs no human agency to support it!" 


When Malone finished there was a momentary hush. Then the court broke into a storm of applause that surpassed that for Bryan. But although Malone had won the oratorical duel with Bryan, the judge ruled against permitting the scientists to testify for the defense. 


When the court adjourned, we found Dayton's streets swarming with strangers. Hawkers cried their wares on every corner. One shop announced: DARWIN IS RIGHT—INSIDE. (This was J. R. Darwin's Everything to Wear Store.) One entrepreneur rented a shop window to display an ape. Spectators paid to gaze at it and ponder whether they might be related. 


"The poor brute cowered in a corner with his hands over his eyes," a reporter noted, "afraid it might be true." 


H. L. Mencken wrote sulphurous dispatches sitting in his pants with a fan blowing on him, and there was talk of running him out of town for referring to the local citizenry as yokels. Twenty-two telegraphists were sending out 165,000 words a day on the trial. 


Because of the heat and a fear that the old court's floor might collapse under the weight of the throng, the trial was resumed outside under the maples. More than 2,000 spectators sat on wooden benches or squatted on the grass, perched on the tops of parked cars or gawked from windows. 


Then came the climax of the trial. Because of the wording of the anti-evolution law, the prosecution was forced to take the position that the Bible must be interpreted literally. Now Darrow sprang his trump card by calling Bryan as a witness for the defense. The judge looked startled. "We are calling him as an expert on the Bible," Darrow said. "His reputation as an authority on Scripture is recognized throughout the world." 


Bryan was suspicious of the wily Darrow, yet he could not refuse the challenge. For years he had lectured and written on the Bible. He had campaigned against Darwinism in Tennessee even before the passage of the anti-evolution law. Resolutely he strode to the stand, carrying a palm fan like a sword to repel his enemies. 


Under Darrow's quiet questioning he acknowledged believing the Bible literally, and the crowd punctuated his defiant replies with fervent "Amens." 


Darrow read from Genesis: "And the evening and the morning were the first day." Then he asked Bryan if he believed that the sun was created on the fourth day. Bryan said that he did. 


"How could there have been a morning and evening without any sun?" Darrow enquired. 


Bryan mopped his bald dome in silence. There were sniggers from the crowd, even among the faithful. Darrow twirled his spectacles as he pursued the questioning. He asked if Bryan believed literally in the story of Eve. Bryan answered in the affirmative. 


"And you believe that God punished the serpent by condemning snakes for ever after to crawl upon their bellies?" 


"I believe that." 


"Well, have you any idea how the snake went before that time?" 


The crowd laughed, and Bryan turned livid. His voice rose and the fan in his hand shook in anger. 


"Your honor," he said. "I will answer all Mr. Darrow's questions at once.  I want the world to know that this man who does not believe in God is using a Tennessee court to cast slurs on Him..." 


"I object to that statement," Darrow shouted. "I am examining you on your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on earth believes." 


The judge used his gavel to quell the hubbub and adjourned the court until next day. 


Bryan stood forlornly alone. My heart went out to the old warrior as spectators pushed by him to shake Darrow's hand. 


The jury were asked to consider their verdict at noon the following day. The jurymen retired to a corner of the lawn and whispered for just nine minutes. The verdict was guilty. I was fined 100 dollars and costs. 


Dudley Field Malone called my conviction a "victorious defeat." A few southern papers, loyal to their faded champion, hailed it as a victory for Bryan. But Bryan, sad and exhausted, died in Dayton two days after the trial. 


I was offered my teaching job back but I declined. Some of the professors who had come to testify on my behalf arranged a scholarship for me at the University of Chicago so that I could pursue the study of science. Later I became a geologist for an oil company. 


Not long ago I went back to Dayton for the first time since my trial 37 years ago. The little town looked much the same to me. But now there is a William Jennings Bryan University on a hill-top overlooking the valley. 


There were other changes, too. Evolution is taught in Tennessee, though the law under which I was convicted is still on the books. The oratorical storm that Clarence Darrow and Dudley Field Malone blew up in the little court in Dayton swept like a fresh wind through the schools and legislative offices of the United States, bringing in its wake a new climate of intellectual and academic freedom that has grown with the passing years.