The Scopes trial was a scam -- but not necessarily a bad one

[00:00:01] Charles Darwin's theory that all mankind had descended from a common ancestor, a so-called missing link, had set off the fireworks. John T. Scopes, a Dayton biology teacher, had decided to test a new Tennessee law that forbade the teaching of any theory that denied the divine creation of man. He deliberately read Darwin's theory of evolution to his high school class, complete with drawings and all details. And just as deliberately, he was arrested and indicted.

[00:00:28] Then the whole nation jumped in with both feet. The great commoner, William Jennings Bryan, let out a roar like a wounded bull elephant. From his semi-retirement in Florida, he screamed to the country that he would assist the Attorney General in the prosecution of the heretic Scopes. Having flung down the gauntlet, Bryan smiled for the newsreels and sat down to prepare his brief. But Scopes was not to face the Lions without help of his own.

[00:00:53] Two famous attorneys of the day, Dudley Field Malone and Clarence Darrow, accepted Bryan's challenge and hastened to Dayton to lock horns with a silver-tongued orator. On the day of the trial, a full house of avid spectators from all over the nation filed in to hear the debate. The issue was no longer the innocence or guilt of Scopes, but rather the final death struggle between two basic human philosophies, fundamentalism versus modernism.

[00:01:19] The upcoming battle had been facetiously dubbed the monkey trial, and the public demonstrations took advantage. The crowd settled back for the titanic struggle of the two famous debaters, and they weren't to be disappointed. Bryan, using his usual emotional appeal, fought the issue in terms of the gospel and scriptures. Darrow, on the other hand, appealed to reason and logical thinking.

[00:01:40] He knew the importance of the basic issue involved, and he delivered the brilliant logic of the case that he and Dudley Malone had repaired with the sure firm hand of an experienced defense attorney. The climax of the trial came when Darrow ruthlessly cross-examined Bryan on the witness stand. He proceeded to humiliate his distinguished opponent. After the closing remarks, Judge Ralston charged the jury, and they retired for their deliberations on a verdict.

[00:02:06] On the day of the announced decision, the two opposing sides waited calmly in the courtroom. The jury foreman, Captain Jack Thompson, delivered the verdict of guilty as charged. John Scopes received the decree of his $100 fine without any outward show of bitterness. Two years later, the decision was to be reversed in the appellate court of appeals. William Jennings Bryan died five days after the end of the famous trial. Although victorious in the courtroom, he and the fundamentalist cause had been destroyed.

[00:02:35] The encounter in Dayton, Tennessee had solved the basic struggle of thinking and education in the modern-day world. What some of you may remember is the Scopes Monkey trial is a scam.

[00:03:03] If you don't know about the trial, you may know about the movie Inherit the Wind, which, and I'm being charitable here, took poetic license with the truth. It's a great movie, and I recommend that you see it, but don't take it for historical fact. Well, let's just cut to the chase.

[00:03:23] I think the movie Inherit the Wind took a lot of wind out of the sails as far as excitement for the Scopes trial around here. And we're gradually working back into the position of saying, look, this was a significant, important event. Let's be proud of it. We had the courage and the initiative to go for it. Let's celebrate.

[00:03:52] 2025 is the 100-year anniversary of the trial. Today, I'm calling it out as a scam, and I'll tell you why. The Dayton Coal & Iron Company had gone bankrupt 12 years before this, and there were several attempts, including one going on at the time, to resurrect the company. It had employed upward of 2,400 people.

[00:04:21] You know, for a town of 1,800, that's not a minor little impact, but it had gone bankrupt for a number of reasons, and Dayton was trying to get through the economic impact that that loss had brought them. That's Tom Davis.

[00:04:44] He's vice president of the Ray County Heritage Preservation Foundation, and he's the go-to guy in Dayton if you want to know about the Scopes trial. In 1925, the American Civil Liberties Union was about five years old, and it wanted a landmark case to put itself on the national agenda. Several states, including Tennessee, passed laws saying evolution, the theory that humans evolved from apes,

[00:05:11] could not be taught in schools because it conflicted with the Bible's Book of Genesis. Tennessee's governor, Austin Paye, delayed signing the bill but eventually put his name to it. Tennessee wasn't alone in passing such bills, but it was the one that drew the attention of the ACLU. AI narrator Alexis reads from an advertisement placed in several Tennessee newspapers by the organization.

[00:05:36] A legal test of the Tennessee law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools and colleges is being sought by the American Civil Liberties Union, a national free speech organization, according to Professor Clarence R. Skinner of Tufts College, chairman of the union's Committee on Academic Freedom. Professor Skinner states that, The law strikes so serious a blow at scientific teaching that we cannot let the issue rest until it has been passed upon by the highest courts.

[00:06:06] We are looking for a Tennessee teacher who is willing to accept our services in testing this law in the courts. Our lawyers think a friendly test can be arranged without costing a teacher his or her job. Distinguished counsel has volunteered their services. All we need now is a willing client. By this test, we hope to render throughout the country a real service to freedom of teaching throughout the country, as we do not believe the law will be sustained.

[00:06:34] Now, test cases are not unusual things. They're often brought to get an indication of how a court might rule before proceeding to a full-blown litigation on a similar issue. It's not a scam, but it's where this one starts. The Chattanooga Times asked its local school superintendent if it would respond to the ACLU.

[00:07:02] The answer was an unqualified no. But up the road in Dayton, Tennessee, George Rappelier read the Times article and had a different idea. He thought the lawsuit would be good for Dayton. So he picked up the phone and called Frank Robinson. Robinson was a pharmacist and community leader. He was also president of the school board.

[00:07:29] Rappelier floated the idea of sponsoring the trial to see if Robinson thought it might bring some attention to Dayton. Robinson was mildly interested, but thought it was worth taking it past some of the other community leaders to see what they thought. It also turned out that the pharmacy sold the textbooks used in the biology class, and it included evolution. The group decided to give it a try.

[00:07:55] Some local attorneys volunteered to play their roles, so now they needed to find a teacher. That job fell to John Scopes, a local teacher who had taught several classes, including biology, but only for a few weeks. Scopes didn't like the law and agreed to go along.

[00:08:14] As I remember the history of the events that happened at that time, the American Civil Liberties Union, in conjunction with various educators and liberal thinkers of the time, contacted numerous teachers in the colleges and universities and more prominent high schools, asked them to allow themselves to allow themselves to be made a test case.

[00:08:44] Finally, an ad came out in the Chattanooga Times saying that the American Civil Liberties Union would finance a test case for anybody who would submit to such proceedings. The first I heard of what was going on was in the middle of the afternoon, I would say.

[00:09:11] The chairman of the school board sent word that he would like to talk to me immediately. Well, within 15 minutes I had arrived at his place of business, and he said, Will you be willing to allow your name to be used for a test case of this to determine the constitutionality of this law? And I said, Well, okay.

[00:09:40] And within 30 minutes from the time I was asked to come to see Mr. Robinson, it was on the wires out of Chattanooga that I was arrested. That's John Scopes from an interview with Studs Terkel. The Chattanooga Times said Scopes left the meeting for a tennis game, contrary to the movie where he was taken to jail. And this is where I make my case for a scam.

[00:10:09] Dayton wanted publicity. The ACLU wanted publicity and promised in a telegram to provide it. The ACLU sold the case to the public as something more than a simple legal test. Community and organizational promotion has always included some hype. We've talked in other episodes when that hype goes over the line, but creationists and Darwinists clashed in a way that took this to a new level. The ACLU and Dayton were happy to see the interest grow.

[00:10:38] There was a little bit of emotion. This is a great story. But there were two Methodist churches in town, the Southern Methodist and the Northern Methodist. And the pastor of the Northern Methodist Church invited an evolutionist believing preacher to come speak to his congregation and explain why evolution and creation are compatible.

[00:11:08] The congregation said no, he's not invited. And Reverend Byrd got mad and said, you know, I'm not going to continue to preach at a church like this. I don't resign. I quit. And he went off to greener pastures or something. Now, the community itself was primarily fundamentalist in belief, wasn't it the whole area?

[00:11:37] Well, I would say essentially, yes, that their type of religion is commonly called fundamentalist. What were the feelings of the people in the town? Feeling people in the town? Well, the people in the town was, of course, that the law was justified. That is, I'm talking about most of the people in the town. That it was, the law was justified. And that they were glad that it was on the statutes of Tennessee.

[00:12:05] But their feeling towards me didn't change. Oh, they respected you? Yeah. They liked me, apparently. I liked them. And they respected what I was doing. By the way, I asked the ACLU several times for its take on the story, and it never responded. The Dayton churches weren't the only ones split on the creation issue. That's why laws were being passed in other states.

[00:12:33] The country was also in turmoil about other things. Prohibition had become law in 1920, and that was just the start. In 1920, the United States Census announced that for the first time, more Americans lived in cities than rural areas.

[00:12:54] And for all of American history until that time, the country, if you needed to win an election, you needed to get right with the farmers. But as farms became more productive, the McCormick Reap and other things, we didn't need as many farmers. Farmers are moving into the cities.

[00:13:13] And there's this sense among some people in rural areas that they, who were considered kind of the heart of the American story, Thomas Jefferson's chosen children of God, were being supplanted by an urban story. And a place where living in the city seemed like an increasingly sophisticated thing to do.

[00:13:37] And farmers who once had been seen as the backbone of America are portrayed by some in the cities as kind of rubes. And there is a growing urban-rural divide. Cities in the late 19th century, people went there because there were jobs. Immigrants went there because that's where they landed. But they were tough. The number of people arriving completely overwhelmed their infrastructure.

[00:14:07] Pollution, sewage problems, horse manure everywhere. It was not pretty. But as a result of a movement known as the Progressive Movement at the turn of the 19th into the 20th century, cities had been cleaned up. Improvements in housing and sewers and parks and playgrounds and sanitation. And changes in the form of government to make them more efficient.

[00:14:36] And in addition, in the 1920s, cities were electrified. Although only one in 10 farm families in the 20s had electricity. In the cities, almost everybody did. And it's going to spur demand. This is part of what's going to make the 20s economy roar. For a whole host of new labor-saving devices that if you lived in the cities, you could use. Because you had electricity.

[00:15:04] Electric toasters and refrigerators and vacuum cleaners and record players. It just seemed like a very kind of exciting place to live. And the cities increasingly seem sexy.

[00:15:19] Adding to the cultural sophistication will be a movement that explodes in the 1920s as the result of the first wave of great African American migration out of the South. And into northern cities. More than a million African Americans moved north during and after World War I.

[00:15:46] Whereas most, 90% of African Americans had lived in the South in 1900. That now starts to change. And with it is going to come some significant racial tension as African Americans move into neighborhoods that had been white neighborhoods. And as part of this cultural contest in which the Scopes Trial is going to sit, as you mentioned, was Prohibition. Which had been passed by folks like Lizzie Borden's Women's Christian Temperance Union.

[00:16:17] And who believed that stamping out alcohol would end domestic violence and poor families squandering their wages and bring order to the city where a lot of these immigrants seem to be spending time in saloons and drinking. But also, which you know, is going to be in the cities a titanic failure. With all of this cultural change, inevitably there will be a backlash.

[00:16:45] And the 1920s is going to see a boom, a rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan, which had originally been created during Reconstruction to fight Reconstruction policy, but then had gone kind of into remission after 1877 when white supremacy again begins to be restored, is going to rise once more.

[00:17:14] And this time its targets will not just be African Americans and their Republican allies, but it's going to be immigrants, Catholics, loose women, union members, Jews, flappers, supporting prohibition. And it's going to be everywhere. Four million members from Maine to Oregon.

[00:17:41] Chicago had 50,000 Klan and 50,000 members. That's University of Maryland history professor John Ross on a C-SPAN presentation about the trial and the national environment surrounding it. His observations illustrate why so many factions believe the Scopes trial would advance their various causes. These are forces local leaders didn't anticipate would come together in Dayton. Now, the ACLU obviously would have sent someone.

[00:18:10] And they had some significant folk in their stable, you might say, to represent Scopes. But the World Christian Fundamentals Association was meeting in Memphis about this time. When they heard about it, they asked Brian if he would represent their interests at the trial. He eventually said yes.

[00:18:40] And when Sue Hicks, one of the local lawyers, heard that, he wrote and asked and invited Brian to assist the prosecution. Brian, of course, agreed. Well, when Brian jumped in, Darrow was speaking to the American Psychological Association in Richmond, Virginia.

[00:19:03] And H.L. Mencken approached him and said, look, you've got to go represent Scopes. So Darrow telegraphed Scopes and offered his services. So, you know, the outside publicity came really from outside. This wasn't something that people in Dayton had even thought about.

[00:19:30] The lawyers, Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, were well known nationally. Bryan was a good lawyer and a superb orator, while Darrow was a great lawyer and always ready for a fight. Both were loud and passionate about their cases. The press devoured the story and people came from around the world to see the trial and protest one side or the other. And there were other stunts. There was activity on the yard.

[00:19:59] We had movie star chimpanzee Joe Mindy in town. There was a gorilla. I never did hear a name. Chicago radio station WGN was just one year old and rented cables to Dayton to broadcast the trial. Reports say it cost the station $1,000 a day. The newsreels had their day, too. But contrary to what they proclaimed, the trial didn't settle the issue of creationism versus Darwinism. It only settled a lawsuit.

[00:20:29] Charles Darwin's theory that all mankind had descended from a common ancestor, a so-called missing link, had set off the fireworks. John T. Scopes, a Dayton biology teacher, had decided to test a new Tennessee law that forbade the teaching of any theory that denied the divine creation of man. He deliberately read Darwin's theory of evolution to his high school class, complete with drawings and all details. And just as deliberately, he was arrested and indicted. Then the whole nation jumped in with both feet.

[00:20:59] The great commoner, William Jennings Bryan, let out a roar like a wounded bull elephant. From his semi-retirement in Florida, he screamed to the country that he would assist the attorney general in the prosecution of the heretic Scopes. Having flung down the gauntlet, Bryan smiled for the newsreels and sat down to prepare his brief. But Scopes was not to face the lions without help of his own.

[00:21:21] Two famous attorneys of the day, Dudley Field Malone and Clarence Darrow, accepted Bryan's challenge and hastened to Dayton to lock horns with a silver-tongued orator. On the day of the trial, a full house of avid spectators from all over the nation filed in to hear the debate. The issue was no longer the innocence or guilt of Scopes, but rather the final death struggle between two basic human philosophies, fundamentalism versus modernism.

[00:21:47] The upcoming battle had been facetiously dubbed the Monkey Trial, and the public demonstrations took advantage. The crowd settled back for the titanic struggle of the two famous debaters, and they weren't to be disappointed. Bryan, using his usual emotional appeal, fought the issue in terms of the gospel and scriptures. Darrow, on the other hand, appealed to reason and logical thinking.

[00:22:09] He knew the importance of the basic issue involved, and he delivered the brilliant logic of the case that he and Dudley Malone had repaired with the sure firm hand of an experienced defense attorney. The climax of the trial came when Darrow ruthlessly cross-examined Bryan on the witness stand. He proceeded to humiliate his distinguished opponent. After the closing remarks, Judge Ralston charged the jury, and they retired for their deliberations on a verdict.

[00:22:34] On the day of the announced decision, the two opposing sides waited calmly in the courtroom. The jury foreman, Captain Jack Thompson, delivered the verdict of guilty as charged. John Scopes received the decree of his $100 fine without any outward show of bitterness. Two years later, the decision was to be reversed in the appellate court of appeals. William Jennings Bryan died five days after the end of the famous trial. Although victorious in the courtroom, he and the fundamentalist cause had been destroyed.

[00:23:04] The encounter in Dayton, Tennessee, had solved the basic struggle of thinking and education in the modern-day world. It was time for the curtain to go up. John Scopes, Jr.: Practically everybody in the United States, and I believe in some foreign countries, that had any patent medicine or any theory of curing a human ailment,

[00:23:29] and anybody who had a theory that would cure our social troubles, our political troubles, they all descended upon the town. Everyone arrived with a master plan. Everybody had a master plan, and everybody was talking at once.

[00:23:59] First of all, the community was expecting thousands and thousands of people to come. At one point, the judge recommended that we build a, what, a 10,000, 20,000-seat pavilion, auditorium, fairgrounds, whatever you want to call it, for the crowd. That didn't go over so well.

[00:24:25] The community asked the governor to send the National Guard for crowd control. He didn't. There were definitely thousands of people who came. As you look at some of the old pictures, you can see that the courtroom was full. You know, the best guesses I've heard would be that there were 600 to 800 people in the courtroom.

[00:24:52] When the trial moved outside the day that Brian was called to the stand, there's estimates of 3,000 to 5,000 people were standing, listening in the courtyard. So we had a big crowd. One, two hotels in town, of course, filled up. One of them promised that they wouldn't raise rates. They raised them a little bit.

[00:25:34] So we come to my question on the scam. Did it pay off? Did the scammers get what they wanted? Well, the ACLU got publicity for sure. They haven't said how important it was to the organization's future. As for Dayton, we go back to Tom Davis. When the reporters and the crowds left, we were back to where we were.

[00:26:01] Really, the long-term result of the trial was Bryan College. William Jennings Bryan died five days after the trial in date. And immediately, some of the local folks, Robinson, some of the lawyers, the judge, got together and said, we need to start a college in Bryan's memory.

[00:26:26] While he was here, Bryan had said this would be a good place for a school to teach from a biblical perspective. And so they organized the William Jennings Bryan Memorial University Association, which rapidly became a national organization with governors and politicians on this committee. Mrs. Bryan said, yes, Dayton is the place that Bryan College needs to be.

[00:26:56] So in 1930, the college opened in the former Ray County High School where Scopes had taught in 1925. They held their opening convocation in the courtroom where the trial had been held. And, you know, Bryan is still going strong today and a major part of our community.

[00:27:22] A story I will tell about Mr. Bryan.

[00:28:05] We all loved so as he'd the Bible teaching. He stood for what was right. He was strong in his convictions. And for them he'd always fight.

[00:28:33] Now he's gone way up in heaven. Find an open door. A lesson that he taught us. Give forever more. The college has prospered and Lazy Boy opened a factory in Ray County.

[00:29:02] Today the population is about 7,000 people compared to 2,400 when the Scopes scam began. That's also up from 6,180 in 2000. About one-third lived below the poverty line. Per capita income is about $12,900 a year. Wikipedia says suburban manufacturing, Robinson manufacturing, and international automotive components groups are major manufacturers.

[00:29:31] Finland-based Nokia Tires pledged to employ 400 at its new factory. So what happened at the trial? Scopes was found guilty. It was appealed once and then again to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which promptly tossed it out. This July, the city will celebrate the event's 100th anniversary. It has a slate filled with festival events, including the staging of the play Inherit the Wind, which is based on the trial transcript.

[00:29:59] The play is interactive and the audience participates. The play is about 90% directly lifted from the trial transcript. And our approach is, look, I don't care if you're a creationist, if you're an evolutionist. I don't care if you want to argue about it. Let's argue about it. But argue from fact. Don't argue about Inherit the Wind. Argue about what happened.

[00:30:27] And you will see what happened when you see the play. Over the years, I would probably say a majority of our audience has been from the creationist camp. But we've had a good showing of people who are from the evolutionist camp.

[00:30:52] One of the funniest things years ago, there was a group of humanists that came. And when Darrow made one of his speeches, they just went wild. They thought it was great. And the guy who was playing Darrow at the time said, I almost lost my place because nobody had ever cheered for me before. You can get details at scopes100.com. I'll have links to that and other activities in the show notes.

[00:31:21] And if you want to see the play, I urge you to get tickets quickly. And as fitting, John Scopes should have the final say about the Supreme Court ruling. Their decision, I think, is one of the remarkable decisions of all times. I've only read it once. But to me, it said this. In their opinion, the law was constitutional. But it was a law that would never be enforced.

[00:31:51] And therefore, there was no point of having a case. If you enjoy the show, please tell your friends and encourage them to listen. And give us a five-star rating wherever you listen. It's important to help people find the show. If you want to talk to me, that's easy too. There's a new feature on our website, scamsandcons.com, that allows you to send me a text.

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