20-05-2025
FOX8 looks back 100 years at Scopes Trial
DAYTON, Tenn. (WGHP) — In the spring of 1925, few people had heard of the small town of Dayton, Tennessee. By that summer, few people hadn't heard of the town.
Dayton had fallen on hard times in the first quarter of the 20th century. The population had fallen from 3,000 to about 1,800, and the city fathers were looking for a quick fix.
'The town boosters … did indeed get together and think, 'How can we draw attention to our town? How can we infuse much-needed revenue through tourism? How can we boost our town's … economic activity?'' High Point University History Professor Joey Fink said.
The idea they came up with was to play off a recently passed law in the state that forbade the teaching of anything other than Biblical creation to explain the existence of humans. A young man named John Scopes was a substitute science teacher at Dayton High School. The town leaders got together and asked him if he'd taught evolution since the textbook the state assigned to high school science included evolution as a theory. Scopes said he wasn't sure he did teach evolution, but he'd be willing to say he did since he prepared classes for a test on the science textbook. That's all the city needed to take him to trial and start what was the first trial of the century.
More than 200 journalists from around the country and even some from overseas came to cover the trial. Dayton was at the center of attention and having an argument that most people didn't correctly understand.
'The argument in 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee, had as much to do with World War I and industrialization as it did with the parents of Tennessee school children,' Fink said.
That's because the town embraced the fight as a way to get people to come visit. Among those who did was Baltimore Sun reporter and commentator H.L. Mencken, who said he found the town much more pleasant than he had imagined. The town's bet was paying off.
The other big attraction besides whether Scopes had broken the law was the two lawyers at the head of it. Three-time Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan was the 'defender of the faith' prosecuting Scopes.
Clarence Darrow, perhaps the most famous attorney in the country, defended Scopes for the American Civil Liberties Union which was the one who brought the case on the grounds of academic freedom.
It was seen by many as another clash between faith and science. Fink said that's not necessarily so.
'If you trace back let's say your Anglo European history to the Middle Ages, some of our greatest institutions of learning were cathedrals of learning and worship, and it was religious scholars who were the key holders of all kinds of forms of inquiry,' said Fink. 'In early modern Europe, most women were not educated, right? There might be elite women who were educated, but most women were not, but a religious woman … could spend their entire life devoted to educational pursuits.'
The country had begun a religious awakening in the latter part of the 19th century that had won some major battles, and it was led by Protestant sects, particularly Pentecostals.
'They were the driving force behind many tensions: the temperance and prohibition movements, education of conflict or perceived conflict between science and religion,' Fink said. 'And the idea is that … the first wave of immigrants who were largely from the British Isles or northern Europe or western Europe … were considered to be the sort of foundational culture of America, and the new immigrants, as they were called, coming from places like Italy, largely Catholic or eastern Europe and Jewish. They were seen as undesirable immigrants and carrying with them cultural, religious and political beliefs that were incompatible with American values and democracy.'
Even in the immediate aftermath of the trial, it wasn't well understood.
'The rights that the ACLU was defending in the Scopes Trial can seem universal, but they were very contextually specific, and the rights that we see in the spotlight today over what's being taught in school or which players are allowed to be on a team, they're contextually specific,' Fink said. 'I think that we have seen many examples where people question what a common set of values and norms in America look like or what they mean? And in many of the moments in American history where this is brought into the spotlight … it's the loudest voices, not the most voices that we hear.'
See more on this story in this edition of The Buckley Report.
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