The Scopes trial ran from July 10th to the 21st, 1925.
For a long time I’ve enjoyed studying the Scopes trial, an event that saw a convergence of legal theory and practice, Southern culture, libertarianism, the history of the Fundamentalist movement, and scientism. The preeminent attorney for the defense, Clarence Darrow, cared little for free speech and nothing for the defendant, John Scopes; his goal in taking the case for no fee was atheism. The ACLU, bankrollers of the show trial, were founded by Roger Baldwin, whose most famous quotation is “Communism is the goal.” The handful of civic leaders in Dayton, Tennessee who volunteered to host the show trial cared nothing for the Bible, science, Communism, or atheism; they just wanted “to put Dayton on the map.” In that, they succeeded like pepperoni pizza. I think that it took O. J. Simpson to knock the Scopes trial out of first place.
John Scopes never even taught evolution; he just agreed to lie and say he did so that a trial could occur. He didn’t participate in the trial. He later said that his contribution was to provide a warm body to sit in the defendant’s chair.
I enjoyed teaching it in my college course on American church history. I made a grave error once, however. To demonstrate the antichristian propaganda that now perverts the history of the event, I showed the class five minutes of the film “Inherit the Wind.” One young lady, on the final exam, gave me the movie version instead of what I had taught.
It was the first trial to be broadcast live across the nation and it captured the nation’s attention. Likewise, the ridicule heaped upon it by the eminently talented reporter H. L. Mencken also became part of the nation’s memory.
If today’s descriptions of the event aren’t grossly twisted, they still tend to miss the key dynamics that explain the actions of the characters. This is the challenge of historiography: the writer has to choose, out of millions of data bits, the things which he believes explain the events and their aftermath. In this case, if he doesn’t understand Fundamentalism, Marxism, scientism, atheism, and the South of 1925, he’s going to get it wrong. Oh, they all THINK that they understand, but, as I said, that’s the cigar butt in the punch bowl of historiography.
I highly recommend Summer for the Gods by Edward Larson. His mastery of the material is stellar.