Scopes monkey trial, broadcast by WGN radio, held nation in thrall 100 years ago

Chicago Tribune

13-07-2025

On July 11, 1925, Mother Nature almost robbed WGN of its place of honor at the intersection of radio and legal history.
A electrical storm destroyed telephone poles and wires over a wide area of southern Ohio. The Chicago Tribune, WGN's owner, was using those wires as part of a link between its broadcast facility atop the Drake Hotel in Chicago and a courtroom in Dayton, Tennessee.
On trial in that courtroom was John Scopes, a high school teacher, charged with violating Tennessee's Butler Law. It prohibited public schools from teaching 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.'
Strictly speaking, neither Darwin's theory of evolution nor the Book of Genesis were on trial. But that subtlety was lost in the script that George W. Rappleyea wrote for the controversy.
The manager of a Dayton industrial plant, Rappleyea read an article in the Chattanooga Times about the American Civil Liberties Union wanting to challenge the Butler Law. Rappleyea thought that hosting a big lawsuit could be a shot in the arm for Dayton, which was going through tough times.
So he met with Walter White, the superintendent of the county's schools, at the soda fountain in Robinson's Drug Store. They sent a boy who found Scopes on a tennis court, and the young biology teacher proved sympathetic to Rappleyea's proposal. He arranged for Scopes to be arrested.
This instantly made Scopes famous. He was awarded a 'degree of doctor of universal religion' by the Liberal Church of Denver, which practiced religious toleration. The American Federation of Teachers endorsed Scopes' fight 'in behalf of freedom of education.'
Scopes' sister had a rockier road. Lela Scopes was turned down for a teaching position in Paducah, Kentucky, for refusing to denounce her brother's teaching of evolutionism, but received several other offers and took the one from Winnetka, north of Chicago.
Rappleyea was arrested three times in one week for speeding and parking. The town commissioners learning that reporters were planning to be in court, refused to hear the case, 'until all this gang is gone.'
As a public relations campaign, Rappleyea's maneuvers were wildly successful.
When word got out about what was afoot in Dayton, William Jennings Bryan, a fundamentalist leader and three times the Democratic Party's presidential candidate, volunteered to be the prosecutor.
Clarence Darrow, a famed Chicago attorney, headed Scopes' team. Dubbed the champion of lost causes, he abhorred both religious and anti-religious dogma. He refused the title of atheist because it implies certainty that God doesn't exist.
With that lineup of orators, what quickly became known as the Scopes 'monkey trial' sold papers far and wide. On its opening day, the Chicago Tribune Press Service distributed a story about Dr. Serge Voronoff, a Parisian surgeon, with an anti-aging therapy. He grafted monkeys' testicle tissue onto men. The reporter asked if that could have a reverse Darwinian effect: transforming humans into simians. 'I told you, I don't feel like talking monkeys today,' he replied.
In Dayton, Main Street took on a carnival atmosphere. Rival trainers brought chimpanzees to town — including a celebrated simian named Joe Mendi, who wore a plaid suit and a fedora hat. Vendors hawked toy monkeys and Bibles. Shop windows had monkey-theme displays.
Over 200 reporters descended on Dayton. WGN's engineer visited it in May. He and Judge John Raulston negotiated the ground rules for broadcasting the trial.
All rooms in local homes were rented. 'Graysville sanitarium, four miles from town will be converted into a hotel, and Evansville, five miles away, is being surveyed for rooms,' the Tribune noted. 'Bus service to those towns and to Chattanooga, 29 miles away, relieved the rooming problem to some extent.'
Faculty at the University of Chicago and other schools considered refusing to recognize 'degrees and credits from colleges in states where the law prohibits scientific freedom,' the Tribune reported.
R.H. Newman, dean of science, and Charles Judd, dean of education at U. of C., and Fay Cooper Cole, an anthropologist at the Field Museum, set out for Dayton as expert witnesses for Scopes' defense. Wilbur Nelson, Tennessee's state geologist, and Kirtley Mather, chairman of Harvard University's geology department, would testify that the Earth's rock formations were far older than the biblical account of the universe's creation.
None took the witness stand. The judge ruled that evolution's validity was irrelevant. The issue was only whether Scopes taught the theory.
A Tribune editorial noted that in Bible Belt school districts, opinion on many matters scientific and otherwise wasn't monolithic, even on the shape of the Earth. A school superintendent was quoted as saying, 'Where they like it round we teach it round, and where they like it flat we teach it flat.'
On a Sunday during the trial, William Jennings Bryan preached a fire-and-brimstone sermon to an enormous crowd on the courthouse lawn. 'Today we need Jesus more than ever,' he said. 'He was unlettered and had no school advantages. No scholar dares add a word to his moral code.'
The next day, the trial resumed in a courtroom that WGN's engineer had rearranged. Instead of sitting on a high bench, the judge was face-to-face with the jury. The witness stand was in the foreground, and the lawyers were on either side, facing microphones.
The broadcast crew also wired up loudspeakers outside the courthouse. Townspeople could follow the trial, and WGN could air their reactions.
Still, so many spectators showed up to watch live that Judge John Raulston feared the floor would collapse and, for reasons that also included the stifling heat of July in a Southern state, moved the proceedings to the courthouse lawn on July 20.
Raulston at one point cited Darrow for contempt, saying he'd insulted the court at its session the previous Friday. 'Men may become prominent but should never feel themselves superior to the law or to justice,' the judge said.
Darrow apologized, but followed suit for the rest of the trial. He jumped to his feet when a minister offered a prayer on Tuesday.
The judge said he'd asked the town's ministerial association to choose a clergyman, with no denominational skin in the game. Darrow said that didn't matter. He didn't want anybody saying any prayer. That didn't sit well with the God-fearing folk of Dayton.
'If Mr. Darrow ever had a chance to have his client acquitted, he lost it in that minute,' the Tribune's correspondent wrote. 'He burned his ships and started into an unknown wilderness for the shining city of his dreams.'
Wednesday produced the confrontation everyone had been waiting for. Darrow called Bryan as a witness for the defense and grilled him on a number of biblical stories. He subtly noted the difficulty Adam and Eve's son Cain might have in finding a mate.
'Did you ever discover where Cain got his wife?' Darrow asked.
'No sir, I leave the agnostics to hunt for her,' Bryan replied.
At the end of that Q&A, the audience applauded and embraced their hero. Darrow asked the jury to find Scopes guilty so the case could be appealed. The jury obliged, and he was fined $100. He did not pay it, and the conviction was eventually set aside by the Tennessee Supreme Court on a technicality.
The outcome being predictable, WGN's crew bid goodbye to Toledo, Ohio, before the verdict. Quin Ryan, the 'Voice of WGN,' wrote about his time in Dayton covering the trial in his Tribune column, 'Inside the Loud Speaker.'
He thanked some by name, like Robinson the druggist, for a place to sleep. He wrote that he dined in the mayor's home.
'The town charms us by its graciousness, and not because we are its press agents, but its guests,' Ryan said. 'A confidence man would have his heart broken in 10 minutes.'