Scopes Trial, celebrated 1925 case involving the teaching of evolution in public schools. By 1920, Protestant fundamentalism had coalesced from various conservative religious traditions into an organized movement fighting the spread of the religious modernism and cultural secularism. Fundamentalist leaders viewed evolutionary naturalism, propounded by Charles Darwin in
The Origin of Species (1859), as a root cause of both developments. Joined by William Jennings
Bryan, they launched a national crusade against Darwinism. Their first major legal victory came in 1925, when Tennessee outlawed teaching about human evolution in public schools. The
American Civil Liberties Union invited local teachers to challenge the law. John Scopes, a young science teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, accepted the challenge at the urging of local school and civic leaders, who sought to promote their town.
The case resulted in a highly publicized clash of ideas rather than a serious prosecution of Scopes, who was never threatened with jail or loss of job. Bryan joined the prosecution, which vigorously asserted popular and parental control over public education. Clarence Darrow, a famed Chicago lawyer, led a team of prominent attorneys and scientists in defense of Scopes and the concept of
academic freedom. H.L.
Mencken and many other journalists covered the trial, which was also carried live on a Chicago
radio station.
Throughout the eight‐day trial (10–21 July 1925), Bryan and Darrow sparred over the validity of evolutionary science and revealed
religion. The jury convicted Scopes, but not before Darrow exposed Bryan to ridicule as an “expert witness” on the
Bible. Bryan died a week later, and the crusade against Darwinism gradually lost momentum over the next few years. In 1927, the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed Scopes’ conviction on a technicality but upheld the law. Several southern states adopted similar restrictions, though none was enforced in court.
Although the Scopes trial had little impact on popular religious or scientific beliefs, it passed into folklore as a object lesson in the danger of intolerance in a democratic society. The defense theory of individual freedom and strict separation of
church and state was later adopted by the U.S.
Supreme Court in a series of decisions, most notably
McCollum v.
Board of Education (1948), barring public‐school religious instruction;
Abington Township School District v.
Schempp (1963), against officially sponsored prayer in public schools; and
Epperson v.
Arkansas (1968), overturning a state statute based on the Tennessee antievolution law.
See also
Evolution, Theory of;
Fundamentalist Movement;
Journalism;
Modernist Culture;
Science: Revolutionary War to World War I;
Science: From 1914 to 1945;
Science: Science and Religion;
Secularization;
South, The;
Twenties, The.
Bibliography
Edward J. Larson , Summer of the Gods, 1997.
Ronald L. Numbers , Darwinism Comes to America, 1998.
Edward J. Larson
