Thirty-five thousand sixty-four days after The Rev. Cartwright opened the proceedings at Rhea County Court House one Friday morning with a prayer (“Oh, God, our divine Father, we recognize Thee as the Supreme Ruler of the universe, in whose hands are the lives and destinies of all men”), I began reading “A WORD-FOR-WORD REPORT” of the State of Tennessee vs. John Thomas Scopes sitting on a bench along the front lawn of the courthouse where ten days later the trial in question, “The Scopes ‘Monkey’ Trial”, came to its crescendo.
The day before, on my way down from “That School Up North”, somewhere in between a preëmptive Dayton, Ohio and my eventual destination, a billboard on the side of the road advertised a true-to-life recreation1 of the ark built by Noah in the Bible nestled in the nearby hills of Kentucky. I stopped, paid $10 to park, paid $50 (+tax) to enter the park, and was bussed from a parking lot to the ark’s park ground. As I walked the length of the ark a few times and ascended its levels, passing through counterpulsing streams of communal body heat and industrial HVAC, I was tracked by a pair of young security guards for awhile (wearing a mask, as would be become a familiar refrain this trip, I was marked easily as “not from around here”) who relented their front and following once I exited (through the gift shop!) to the accompanying Ararat Ridge Zoo & Petting Area which “encourages guests to consider a biblically consistent perspective on animal conservation” by facilitating camel rides and displaying kangaroos lounging in their enclosures. By chance, the charlatan Ken Ham was scheduled to put on a honky tonk piano performance interspersed between Christian-product hawking and anti-evolution evangelizing for a mild mannered crowd of mostly white senior citizens. I considered purchasing something from one of the gift shops, a memento of the excursion, and there was much I could choose from: an eight DVD box set explaining human physiology “in a Creator-honoring way!”, one of many $0.79 booklets on such topics as “What REALLY Happened to the Dinosaurs?”, “God’s Word on GAY “MARRIAGE””, and “The Purpose & Meaning of Life”, an illustrated edition of The Annals of the World by Bishop James Ussher ($44.99), a VIRTUAL REALITY EXPER IENCE t-shirt, and of course a “NEW BOOK BY KEN HAM” which several promotional posters assure us “Every committed Christians needs a copy of”. Tallying the debts already incurred and those still to go, I opted to continue my southerly trajectory.
In 1925, from a bit before July 10th and a bit after July 21th2, Dayton, Tenn. was a center of the world’s attention as the young public school teacher stood trial for teaching evolution in violation of a Tennessee law. Against the charge he was ably defended by a team of ACLU lawyers including arguably his generation’s most (in)famous civil libertarians, Clarence Darrow. Prosecuting the matter, a state’s Attorney-General, A Boy Named Sue3, and a former Secretary of State under the Wilson administration turned Chautauqua circuit orator, William Jennings Bryan. The whole process was written about, radio’ed to, telegraphed from, and spoken of hundreds, thousands of times per day by a couple hundred journalists from across the world. As Bryan noted during the court’s conclusion, “more words have been sent across the ocean by cable to Europe and Australia about this trial than has ever been sent by cable in regard to anything else happening in the United States.” Why?
Ostensibly the trial was for the state of Tennessee to prove to a jury of his (white, male) peers Scopes violated “The Butler Act”, a law “prohibiting the teaching of Evolution Theory in all the Universities, Normals, and all other public schools of Tennessee, which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State”, effective for all teachers once approved by the Governor on March 21, 1925. To be in violation of the act, the state contended, one had to (1) be a teacher (“any teacher”), (2) teach in a school that received state public school funds and (3) “teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals”.
Employed in “a coaching-and-teaching job”4 at the Rhea County High School in Dayton at that point for approximately eight months, by mid-April of 1925, the 24-year old John Scopes was substituting for Prof. Ferguson, the typical biology teacher (and Principal of Rhea County High School), and expected to review material with students in preparation for their final exams on April 28.
During the trial, the prosecution had four witnesses testify against Scopes: the Superintendent of Rhea County schools, two boy students5, and the proprietor of a local drug store. The questioning of these witnesses by the state and the defense, the entirety of the evidence presented to the jury, took less than two hours.
At issue:
Did John Scopes teach evolution?
Maybe. Probably not. Probably not in any substantive way. Certainly not as an iconoclastic pedagogue impressing upon his students the significance of the theory of evolution by natural selection.
I offer below variety of answers offered to the question of if/when did he teach “that man has descended from a lower order of animals” in violation of the Butler Act, mainly sourced from the transcript itself.
- “about the 2d of April” – Howard Morgan
- “he said that he had reviewed it the last two or three weeks [of April]” (est. weeks of April 6, 13, 20) – F. E. Robinson reported on a conversation he had with John Scopes
- “About three weeks” before school was out; “about the middle of April” (est. week of April 13) – Harry Shelton
- “reviewed that [“Pages 194 and 195 of this book”, Hunter’s Civic Biology] about the 20th of April” – Attorney General Stewart
- Morris Stout and Charles Hagley would have testified “This book [Hunter’s Civic Biology] was reviewed about the 20th of April” – Attorney General Stewart
- “reviewed it somewhere about the twenty-first of April” – Attorney General Stewart
- “April 24, 1925” – State of Tennessee in the indictment against him
- “during certain days in April, somewhere” – Walter White
- “To tell the truth, I wasn’t sure I had taught evolution.” – John T. Scopes (from his autobiography, Center of the Storm)
- “He never taught it.” – Bill Scopes, John T. Scopes’ son (from an article “What John Scopes Told His Family & Friends about His Trial” by Randy Moore)
On two very different days, the defense put two very different witnesses on the stand: Maynard M. Metcalf, a zoologist, and Williams Jennings Bryan, Counsel for the Prosecution. Each was spectacle. Neither was heard by the jury.
Issues of freedom of thought, expression, and religious practice swirled with scientific advancement, missteps, and uncertainty. Or at least that is how we may paint the grand panel at this historical distance. The days’ details dwelled on arcane points of the language of law and intended policy (e.g., did the state legislature intend that the first clause of the act encompass the second clause such that if the second clause be violated, necessarily so too is the first, or are the first and the second clauses independent such that both portions must each be violated, that is must one violate both the first and the second clause to be in violation of the statute?). Where there is a chance for disagreement by one side, it is taken. Where there is opportunity for the defense to cry foul, the Judge listens patiently before dismissing the concern. Where some see the law as stating clearly its intent and meaning (“it shall be unlawful for any teacher…to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals”), others see the reconciliation of the fact of our evolution origins with religious belief, spiritual meaning, and a sense of the numinous in the universe. Those latter points are only levied by the defense in type- and hand-written affidavits by its expert witnesses which are not given to the jury for consideration.
At each turn, everyone mugs for the camera. (Who can’t see the stars in flashbulbs or from the hills of Walden Ridge?) William Jennings Bryan, commonly known as “The Commoner” and three time U.S. presidential candidate, acting as counsel for the prosecution (due in part to his being an initial proponent of the bill and other state bills like it) probably did more than most to excite folks in Dayton. Darrow as counterpoint, a principled agnostic, unconcerned with meeting folks in the next world, told them what he thought in this one. Half a dozen other lawyers joined each as the state sought to prove its case. The Judge made sure the newspapermen had plenty of time for photographs.
1. Surely, out there someone is teasing out each of the layers of irony in the Ark Encounter being recreation as both a “creation again” and a “leisure activity”.
2. At least until July 26th, on the afternoon of which William Jennings Bryan died during a nap in the home of F. R. Rogers.
3. Whispers in the footnotes of history even suggest that’s where the song comes from.
4. “The vacancy had appeared in late summer as the football coach had resigned unexpectedly, leaving the school without a coach or anyone to teach algebra, physics, and chemistry.”
5. Two others were also prepared to substantially testify to the same details, according to the Attorney General.