Evolution on Trial
Eighty years after a Dayton, Tennessee, jury found John Scopes guilty of teaching evolution, the citizens of "Monkeytown" still say Darwin's for the birds
- By Steve Kemper
- Smithsonian magazine, April 2005, Subscribe
Outdoor proceedings on July 20, 1925, showing William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow. Watson Davis
In the summer of 1925, when William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow clashed over the teaching of evolution in Dayton, Tennessee, the Scopes trial was depicted in newspapers across the country as a titanic struggle. Bryan, a three-time presidential candidate and the silver-tongued champion of creationism, described the clash of views as "a duel to the death." Darrow, the deceptively folksy lawyer who defended labor unions and fought racial injustice, warned that nothing less than civilization itself was on trial. The site of their showdown was so obscure the St. Louis Post-Dispatch had to inquire, "Why Dayton, of all places?"
It's still a good question. Influenced in no small part by the popular play and movie Inherit the Wind, most people think Dayton ended up in the spotlight because a 24-year-old science teacher named John Scopes was hauled into court there by Bible-thumping fanatics for telling his high-school students that humans and primates shared a common ancestry. In fact, the trial took place in Dayton because of a stunt. Tennessee had recently passed a law that made teaching evolution illegal. After the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced it would defend anyone who challenged the statute, it occurred to several Dayton businessmen that finding a volunteer to take up the offer might be a good way to put their moribund little town on the map.
Judge James "Jimmy" McKenzie, whose grandfather Ben, and uncle, Gordon, helped prosecute Scopes, says, the trial "gave Dayton a black eye." But in spite of all the hoopla and history associated with it, he notes wryly, "the case didn't solve anything." "As a result of the Scopes trial, evolution largely disappeared in public school science classrooms [until the late 1950s]," says historian Edward J. Larson, a professor at the University of Georgia and author of Summer for the Gods, a Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the trial and its aftermath. Larson acknowledges that there is "more mandated teaching of evolution now than ever before." But that doesn't necessarily translate into actual teaching.
Today, one thing about Dayton has not changed and probably never will: its bedrock fundamentalism. Even now, it's hard to find a teacher who goes along with Darwin. "We all basically believe in the God of creation," says the head of the high-school science department.
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Comments (8)
"Anon" - who typed "Excuse me, did you just say "facts of Human evolution"? If piltdownman was proven wrong, then how am I suppose to believe that evolution is fact and not ficton?" Don't ignorantly offer one very rare attempt at science fraud to try to discredit the entire process of science in general...or of one of the most-throughly-tested and CONFIRMED scientific proposals of all time - evolution by means of natural selection. It was science, itself - through the rigorous application of the Scientific Method - which uncovered the Piltdown Hoax. The same cannot be said of religions, which routinely hide its flaws and contradictions with threats of damnation and acts of persecution and "Inquisitions" - all cloaked in rituals and traditions. If any human endeavor could be discredited by the false uses it was put to by its followers, religion would have ceased to exist millenia ago.
Posted by ned clark on January 30,2012 | 06:31 PM
Excuse me, did you just say "facts of Human evolution"? If piltdownman was proven wrong, then how am I suppose to believe that evolution is fact and not ficton?
Posted by Anon on February 7,2011 | 11:54 AM
This artical has helped allot for school me and my friend sophie are doing a project on the scopes monkey trial for national history day. We had read that the smithsonian had written a artical about it in one of there magazines so we googled it and here it is. thank you smithsonian.
Posted by CJ on January 15,2011 | 02:42 PM
What a shame! 80 years later and our society is still denying the facts of human evolution.
Posted by Steve Ross on July 19,2010 | 01:31 AM
As a European who has travelled in both the US and Canada, I find it laughable to say that Canada is not religious. We travelled around Canada in Bed and Breakfasts and as atheists found it really hard to avoid Bible study groups, prayer sessions, and religious weirdos especially in rural areas. I guess there weren't as many as you find in the US, but compared with the rest of the western world, Canada is still fairly archaic in religious ideology.
Posted by Francine Last on February 9,2009 | 05:12 PM
To say that you cannot practice your religion in Canada is just an outright lie. As someone who has both US and Canadian citizenship Canada's laws are more open that US. For instance, while the US has a separation of church and state clause, it is clear to see how fundamentalist Christians have changed so many laws in the US, geared towards denying gay men and women equal rights. Its so bad that Arkansas recently passed a law denying gay and lesbians from adopting children, and on and on. Canada, unlike the US, does believe in a secular government and actually enforces those laws. The only thing that Canada doesn't do is that it doesn't allow right wing Christian fundamentalists to spew anti gay rhetoric on the air, and likewise it would prevent people from spewing lies and anti Jewish rhetoric. Christians who would want to deny evolution are just dummies. As a Canadian it is clear that we here, north of the border, have little sympathy for fundamentalists, whether Christian, Muslim, Hindu or Jewish. If you want to go to USA and live in a country that seeks to undermine women, gay men, people of race, with text written by sexist and racist men who hated women, more than a thousand years ago, please go!
Posted by Rangdrol on November 18,2008 | 06:05 PM
I am so sorry to hear that you are not allowed to practice your religion in Canada. I am also surprised. I had no idea Canada had such a repressive society. I am curious as to how that was accomplished. How did they manage to prevent you from practicing your religious beliefs in your own home and your own church? That is outrageous. I shall google recent changes in Canadian Law to seek the truth.
Posted by w.edward on April 10,2008 | 09:47 AM
I am immediately Googling jobs in Dayton! I'm Canadian and would love to apply for refugee status into the US due to religious persecution in my country. You see, I'm Christian, and Canada is NOT a country for Christians. I could go into it a lot further, as it is all but illegal to be Christian in Canada; and the insane respone of "Freedom of Religion" as a statement of "free to believe and live any religion" is wearing so thin. It means that the country is "free from religion", and thus morals and values; the very ones the country has relied on to survive its developmental years on. God bless you Dayton!
Posted by ldouglas on January 16,2008 | 08:39 PM