July 13 through 21, 2025, is the 100th anniversary of Tennessee’s (and perhaps the United States’) most famous trial, the Scopes Trial. Its technical legal import was little: a $100 fine reversed for being imposed by the judge instead of the jury. However, the 1925 case’s social significance was vast. It is no exaggeration to say it marked the start of the culture wars that rage to this day. It is a good time to review the great event that took place within and without the Rhea County Courthouse.

Clarence Darrow (1857-1928), left, and William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) in the Circuit courtroom in the Rhea County Courthouse.

Designs in a Dayton Drugstore

A staged proceeding gains much dignity when called a “test case.” But the civic-minded instigators of State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes hatched a scheme in Robinson’s Drug Store neither so modest in scale nor lofty in principle as simply determining the constitutionality of the Butler Act, Tennessee’s new law against teaching the theory of human evolution. The intent of Dayton’s boosters was to rescue the town’s faltering economy with a “show trial.” ¹

After the regular high school biology teacher refused to take part, the drugstore plotters and school board members summoned from a tennis match the indispensable player, John Scopes.² The young man, primarily hired to coach the football team, had substituted in the biology class for two weeks, but he did not teach on the day to be cited in the indictment. He did not even recall teaching evolution,³ and the subject did not appear in the exam he gave his students.⁴ It did appear in the state-supplied textbook, George William Hunter’s Civic Biology.⁵ In any event, Scopes would not be called to testify.

William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska, three-time Democratic presidential nominee (never carrying Rhea County⁶⁾ and former secretary of state, volunteered to help the prosecution led by Tom Stewart, the district attorney general.⁷ Bryan was a legendary orator, early on known as “the Boy Orator of the Platte,” and a religious fundamentalist who became an ardent anti-evolutionist and avid promoter of Florida real estate, both trendy topics in the mid-1920s.

Despite his conservative religious views, Bryan’s political record was progressive.⁸ And a quarter of a century earlier, he had said of education of American youth that “it is essential that men and women who instruct them shall have the brains to think for themselves and the courage to express their opinions without fear or favor.”⁹ By 1925, Bryan had become “the perfect embodiment of old-fashioned American idealism — friendly, naïve and provincial.”¹⁰ He admonished his supporters to “trust in the Rock of Ages, not the age of rocks.”¹¹

William Jennings Bryan outside the Rhea County Courthouse.

Although not its first choice, the ACLU accepted the voluntary services of the great defense lawyer Clarence Darrow of Chicago, “Attorney for the Damned,” to represent Scopes. It was his first and only time working pro bono.¹² The liberal, agnostic Darrow remarked that his client was “indicted for the crime of teaching the truth.”¹³ One of the prosecutors replied, “We don’t need anybody from New York to come down here and tell us what [the law] means.” ¹⁴

With the trial touted as science vs. religion, the national media descended on a sweltering carnival-like Dayton. Shops placed cardboard monkeys in their windows. The drugstore offered “simian sodas.” A police motorcycle sported a “Monkeyville Police” sign.¹⁵ Hot dog, lemonade and biology book vendors lined the streets. A “Read Your Bible” banner was strung on the courthouse,¹⁶ and a chimpanzee wearing a business suit and named “Joe Mendi” would shake hands for a quarter.¹⁷ Western Union placed 22 telegraph operators above the grocery to transmit news of the trial across an enthralled nation,¹⁸ and it was the first trial broadcast by radio.¹⁹ Commentator Frederick Lewis Allen observed that “Ballyhoo had come to Dayton.”²⁰

Scopes (1900-1970)

‘The Scopes Monkey Trial’

One would think the architect of the 1891 Rhea County Courthouse was a fortune teller, for the breathtakingly enormous Circuit courtroom, still the largest in Tennessee,²¹ is expansive enough for a small circus, let alone what an army of journalists would call “the trial of the century.”²² And it is not like the building’s designer just thought big. The afterthought of a Chancery courtroom was a cubbyhole. It had a miniature bench and served a dual — or perhaps primary — purpose of housing a staircase to the belfry.

Each day of the so-called “Scopes Monkey Trial” opened with a prayer. Attorney General Stewart proceeded to denounce the theory of human evolution as “undermining the faith of Tennessee children and robbing them of their chance of eternal life.”²³ Wearing lavender suspenders, Darrow called a parade of witnesses, from a 14-year-old high school student who said he was not harmed by the lesson on evolution to a zoologist who contended life on earth started about 600 million years ago.²⁴

Circuit Judge John Raulston eventually excluded the evidence of prominent scientists proffered by Darrow and ruled against the defense at almost every opportunity. When an exasperated Darrow implied the judge was biased, he was held in contempt. Darrow apologized the next day. After citing scripture on forgiveness, limelight-loving Raulston lifted the sanction.²⁵

On July 20, due to the heat and the courtroom’s bowing floor, the proceedings were moved to a platform on the shady courthouse lawn. The same day, the most dramatic phase of the trial took place: Darrow unexpectedly called Bryan to the stand as a Bible expert. When Stewart objected, Bryan shushed him and agreed to testify to defend the faith.²⁶ Thus began what The New York Times proclaimed was “the most amazing courtroom scene in Anglo-American history.”²⁷    

During a 90-minute cross-examination, with Stewart continuing to try to stop it as irrelevant,²⁸ Bryan often directed his answers to the 2,000 spectators.²⁹ During their “savage encounter,”³⁰ Darrow said his aim was “to prevent bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the educational system of the United States.”³¹ A red-faced Bryan called Darrow “the greatest atheist and agnostic in the United States!” ³²

Bryan announced: “I believe everything in the Bible should be as it is given there.”³³ But in response to Darrow’s relentless questioning about Bible interpretation and inconsistencies, he conceded that the world could have been made over millions of years.³⁴ A vexed Bryan finally protested:

Bryan: Your Honor, I think I can shorten this testimony. The only purpose Mr. Darrow has is to slur the Bible, but I will answer his question, I will answer it all at once, and I have no objection in the world, I want the world to know that this man, who does not believe in God, is trying to use a Tennessee court —

Darrow: I object to that.

Bryan: — to slur it, and while it will require time, I am willing to take it.

Darrow: I object to your statement. I am examining you on your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on earth believes.

The Court: Court is adjourned until tomorrow morning.³⁵

The next day, Judge Raulston ended the cross-examination and struck Bryan’s testimony as irrelevant. Without closing arguments, Darrow asked for a guilty verdict from which to appeal and attack the Butler Act.³⁶ After deliberating for nine minutes, the jury granted his wish.³⁷ At sentencing, Scopes told the court:

I feel I have been convicted of violating an unjust statute. I will continue in the future, as I have in the past, to oppose this law in any way I can. Any other action would be in violation of my idea of academic freedom — that is to teach the truth as guaranteed in our Constitution of personal and religious freedom. I think the fine is unjust.³⁸

The Great Trial’s Aftermath

Plans were made to appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in defense of Scopes’s liberties and to set a precedent against such laws. The ACLU considered replacing Darrow with a high-powered appellate advocate such as Charles Evans Hughes or John W. Davis, but the loyal Scopes wanted Darrow. Nevertheless, the Tennessee Supreme Court brought an end to the litigation with its technical reversal.³⁹

Bryan lingered in Tennessee following the trial to give interviews and make public appearances, including a speech to 6,000 in Winchester. In an anticlimax to the ordeal, he suddenly died while napping on July 25 in Dayton.⁴⁰ His wife supported the establishment of a college named for him there.⁴¹ A museum dedicated to the Scopes Trial was created in the courthouse basement, and statues of Bryan and Darrow stand on the lawn. The Butler Act was repealed in 1967.⁴² Long after the trial, John Scopes summed up what happened as a drugstore “discussion that got past control.”⁴³ |||

RUSSELL FOWLER is director of litigation and advocacy at Legal Aid of East Tennessee (LAET), and since 1999 he has been adjunct professor of political science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He served as the law clerk to Chancellor C. Neal Small in Memphis and earned his law degree at the University of Memphis in 1987. Fowler has written many publications on law and legal history, and is a regular columnist for the Journal. He received the TBA’s Justice Joseph W. Henry Award for Outstanding Legal Writing for 2023.

NOTES
1. Randy Moore and William F. McComas, The Scopes Monkey Trial 11 (2016).
2. Id. at 23.
3. Id. at 9, 30.
4. Id. at 32.
5. Paul Carter, The Twenties in America 83 (1968); Moore at 92.
6. Moore at 10.
7. Id. at 52.
8. See Carter at 81-82.
9. Paul W. Glad, The Trumpet Soundeth 99 (1960).
10. Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday 168 (1931).
11. Herbert N. Foerstel, Toxic Mix: A Handbook of Science and Politics 155 (2010).
12. Brandt Aymar and Edward Sagarin, Laws and Trials that Created History 125 (1974).
13. Moore at 10.
14. Id.
15. James Ciment and Leigh Kimmel, “Scopes Trial (1925)” in Encyclopedia of the Jazz Age 464, 466 (2008).
16. Ciment at 466.
17. Moore at 71.
18. Allen at 169.
19. Ciment at 466.
20. Allen at 170.
21. Moore at 55.
22. Ciment at 464.
23. Allen at 170.
24. Id. at 169.
25. Moore at 83.
26. Aymar at 126.
27. Moore at 83.
28. Aymar at 126.
29. Moore at 83.
30. Allen at 171.
31. Id. at 170.
32. Id. at 171.
33. Ciment 465.
34. Moore at 95.
35. Aymar at 128.
36. See id. at 128-29.
37. Ciment at 467.
38. Moore at 96.
39. Aymar at 129.
40. Moore at 98.
41. Id. at 49.
42. Moore at 119.
43. Id. at 9.