TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Katharine Heriges on Jul 13, 2017
A statue of Clarence Darrow, the attorney who argued on behalf of John T. Scopes in the match-up that came to be known as the "Scopes Monkey Trial," will be dedicated Friday at 10 a.m. outside the Rhea County Courthouse in which the trial took place, the Time Free Press reports. The statue, underwritten by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, will stand opposite an existing monument to Darrow’s Scopes foe, William Jennings Bryan. NPR talked to Dayton residents about the statues and what the trial has meant to the town. Scopes, a high school teacher accused of illegally teaching the theory of evolution in the classroom, lost his case in the original 1925 trial, but the conviction was reversed by the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1927. Friday is the first day of the annual Scopes Trial Play and Festival, which continues through July 23.