Ask Americans about Scopes’ trial, and they may have heard of him as the “judgment of the century”, a confrontation about the teaching of human evolution.
Less known are its origins. As the historian Edward J. Larson observed in “Summer for the gods”, his winning book of the Pulitzer Prize: “Like so many American archetypal events, the trial itself began as a advertising trick.”
Held during July 1925 in the small railway city of Dayton, Tennessee, located not far from the public university where I taught Studies of the Apalaches, the trial was a “trick” caused by the approval of the Butler Law by the state legislature, which prohibited the educators of public schools from teaching “any theory that denies the history of the divine creation of man as taught in the Bible. Teach, on the other hand, that man has descended from a lower order of animals. ” Tennessee was the first state to promulgate this type of legislation.
This “judgment of the monkeys” – thus appointed by the journalist Hl Mencken, by the common ancestor of humans with the apes – presented a cultural gap in the United States, since many Christians fought with the way of reconciling biblical beliefs with the theory of the evolution of Charles Darwin. That gap would be expanded with the coverage of the media and the national response. During the last century, the collective memories of the trial, interpreted through music, cinema and literature, have proven to be an indicator of the ongoing “cultural wars” in American society.
Advertising trick
In Tennessee, support for the Butler law was not universal. George Rapppleyea, manager of a coal and iron mining operation in the Dayton area, was not in favor. Rappleyea pressed other community leaders, some of whom supported the new law, to collectively organize a trial, with the hope that media attention would generate economic activity in the city.
These instigators approached John T. Scopes, a professor of social and mathematical sciences at local public high school who had also been a substitute professor of some biology lessons. The 24 -year -old could not remember if his conferences had violated the Butler Law, but the textbook that was used in his school included the theory of evolution. The scope agreed to participate.
They testified against their teacher three students who had clearly been trained to do so. However, the judge who presided persuaded the grand jury to accuse.
As a first indication of external interest, Paul Patterson, editor of The Baltimore Sun, paid the bail of Scopes, and the ACLU announced that he would defend him.
Center of the storm
The arguments began on July 10, 1925 at the Palace of Justice of Rhea County. The trial could have begun as a determination of whether Scopes had violated the Butler law, but both parties soon focused on debating the relative merits of biblical cosmology against Darwinian theory.
On behalf of the creationist perspective was the prosecutor Tom Stewart, future senator of Tennessee. The special prosecutor William Jennings Bryan, former Secretary of State of the United States, was included in the Prosecutor’s Office at the request of a Christian fundamentalist organization.
The position of the evolution theory was argued by the prominent union lawyer Clarence Darrow. An agnostic that distrusted religious fundamentalism, Darrow wrote that “there was no limit to the damage that could be achieved unless the country woke up the evil in question.”
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A circus atmosphere wrapped Dayton. The epigraph of the “monkey test” was the Chimpanzee Joe Mendi, whose coaches posed for photographs in the city. More than 200 journalists attended the trial, with articles published in The New York Times, The New Yorker and other publications throughout the country.
The one who received the most attention was Mencken, whose report for The Baltimore Sun did not try to hide his prejudice against the cultural values of Rural America. The people of Dayton, wrote, “simply cannot imagine a man who rejects the literal authority of the Bible.”
The updates were distributed in real time through the radio, the first essay in the US that was broadcast live nationwide. The filmed images were taken in a hurry from Dayton to be shared in the nation’s cinemas as news.
The trial ended on July 21, 1925, with a conviction and a fine. Scopes’s condemnation was finally annulled by technicalism. However, since the trial had not challenged the legality of the Butler Law, that law remained in Tennessee’s books for more than four decades.
‘Monos Biz-Nesss’
Commenting on the Scopes trial there were two recordings of 1925 of the main singers of the time: a comic jazz song entitled “Monkey Biz-NESS (Down in Tennessee)”, played by the International Novelty Orchestra with singer Billy Murray; And the country success “The John T. Scopes Trial (The Old Religion’s Better after)”, sung by Vernon Dalhart. The lyrics of this last song, composed of Carson Robison, warned the listeners that “you may find a new belief, it will only bring you pain.”
Other songs of the time, with titles such as “The Bible is true”, “You cannot become a monkey”, “You speak like a monkey and walk like a monkey” and “There are no bugs”, they echoed that same line of thought: the “rural” skepticism towards the “urban” perspective and pro-science about the origins of humanity.
While Scopes was mocked in those songs, he and his defenders were held as heroes in “Inherit the Wind”, a 1955 Broadway work by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee. A fictitious representation of the Scopes trial, the work powerfully defended freedom of expression, an evening criticism of the recent investigations of Senator Joseph McCarthy about several US citizens for their political positions and beliefs.
“Inherit the wind” inspired a 1960 film of the same name, directed by Stanley Kramer. His speech of “fanaticism and ignorance” describes the character based on Darrow, played by Spencer Tracy, arguing that, without science, society would go back to an era of intolerance without restrictions. The film premiered in the United States in Dayton on the 35th anniversary of the end of the Scopes trial; Scopes himself was the guest of honor.
The representations of the rural area of Tennessee in the representations of popular culture and on the media coverage of the trial were based on a source of stereotypes about the standards that have continued in the present century. The condescending representations of the region have been present in American culture since before the Civil War.
Commemoration of the centenary
The memory of the Scopes trial endures in popular culture. Let’s take, for example, a reference in the Bruce Springsteen song of 1990 “Part Man, Part Monkey”, or “Monkey Town” by Ronald Kidd of 2006, a historical novel for young adults.
Dayton benefited from the notoriety of the Scopes trial, thanks to sustained cultural tourism. Proud in its unique history, the city today has a historical marker to alert passers -by about the importance of the historical event that took place in the Palace of Justice of Rhea County. And in 2025, Dayton has hosted a series of events to commemorate the centenary of the trial.
In 1925, even Baltimore journalist Mencken reluctantly praised Dayton and his people, admitting: “It would be difficult to imagine a more moral city than Dayton.”
“I hoped to find a miserable southern town … what I found was a rural people of charm and even beauty,” he wrote.
*Ted Olson is a professor of Studies of the Apalaches and Bluegrass and of Ancient Music and Roots of the State University of the East of Tennessee.
This article was originally published in The Conversation/Reuters
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