The
impact of The State of Tennessee vs.
John Thomas Scopes
has been rarely surpassed by that of other trials in the history of
the world or even by other news stories of the last century. Popularly
referred to as the "Scopes Trial," it is almost without
exception included in surveys of the world's great court cases and in
encyclopedias of essential general knowledge.
Starting
off with a big bang in July 10-12, 1925, the fireworks of the eight-day
trial drew to Dayton (population ca. 1,800 and county seat of agricultural
Rhea County) swarms of news media representatives totaling over two
hundred. In the words of twenty-five-year veteran Michael Williams of The
Commonweal, "There is a bigger representation of writers, telegraphers, artists,
photographers and the other items of the newspaper circus than at any
other big story since the naval limitation conference at Washington"
(22 July 1925: 262).
Notable
names abounded both among press representatives -- Bugs Baer, Heywood Broun,
Watson Davis, Joseph Wood Krutch, H. L. Mencken, Adolph Ochs, Westbrook
Pegler -- and publications -- Baltimore Sun,
Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, London
Times, The
Nation, New York Times, Philadelphia
Inquirer, St. Louis Post Dispatch. In China twenty-seven newspapers
published full daily cable accounts of the Scopes proceedings. Chicago
radio station WGN sent a crew and made Scopes the first live national
radio broadcast of an American trial.
But
quantity does not necessarily result in quality, and the story of the
press coverage of. the Scopes Trial in 1925 has been in the main a sorry
one of superficial sensation, unjustified bias, and inexcusable ignorance
or disregard of some of the significant issues at stake and positions held
by the principals. Without any proof offered, Bryan was vilified by
reporters such as H. L. Mencken, who referred to him as "a charlatan,
a mountebank, a zany without shame or dignity" (Baltimore
Evening Sun, 27 July, 1925; reprinted in American
Mercury, Oct. 1925, and Prejudices:
Fifth Series, 1926).
Reporters
came with preconceived provincial notions or premeditated editorial
directives about such matters as small Southern towns, Fundamentalist
Christians, the status of the evolutionary hypothesis, and the nature of
truth. When a local businesswoman asked one reporter why he did not attend
the trial sessions, he replied, "I don't have to know what's going
on; I know what my paper wants me to write." When she asked another
reporter about a ludicrous description of Dayton natives he had written,
he explained that his editor expected colorful accounts (Interview with
Mrs. E. B. Arnold, 4 Aug. 1976).
Unlike
most trials, Scopes was a trial of ideas based on a confrontation of
worldviews, and in general the members of the press could not or would not
handle such heavy philosophizing lest their editors or readers would
object. The results were that the trial was mislabeled "Monkey
Trial" though the status of mankind's supposed monkey ancestors was
not the true central focus. The majoritarian rights argument for taxpaying
parents to have a say in their children's education was shouted down by
outcries for libertarian free speech. The academic freedom of students to
be taught all major facets of controversial issues was--as usual--ignored
in favor of the academic freedom of teachers to declare what they
believed. Scopes was attired in martyr's robes. Biblical religion was
portrayed as the intellectually blind, dusty, dated, and dangerous
disturber of the peace and progressive programs of the new god of modern,
open-minded, intellectual, urbane science.
Scopes
never really taught evolution. The big bang reporting in 1925 has resulted
in intermittent little bangs of feature articles over the years, which for
the most part have tended to repeat the errors and misrepresentations of
the first generation of Scopes reporters. Many historians have compounded
the errors by leaning on the press reports rather than reading the trial
transcript and interviewing participants and spectators.
Most books on the trial are marred by occasional factual errors and
colored by strong anti-Bryan or pro-evolution bias. Readers have to sift
through the chaff of misinformation, which leads to faulty interpretations
and results in biased opinions and warped conclusions.
The
emotional over-reaction of the news media and their biased presentation of
the 1999 action of the Kansas Board of Education regarding science
standards was reminiscent of similar reporting of the 1925 Scopes case and
has resulted in the general public not having an accurate and fair account
of what happened.
Probably
the chief factor in the creation and continuation of the Scopes Trial
impact was the enunciation of the pertinent principles by an outstanding
galaxy of prestigious principals who participated in the trial. The New
York-based American Civil Liberties Union triggered this trial of titans
by advertising for a Tennessee teacher to help them test Tennessee’s
Butler Act and thus gain recognition for their newly restructured and
renamed organization. The ACLU sent the brilliant Arthur Garfield Hays to
head up their delegation.
The
entrance of William Jennings Bryan, who accepted the invitation of the
local promoters, undoubtedly had the most influence on escalating the
trial to major-league proportions since he was a three-time presidential
candidate, former Secretary of State, world renowned orator and writer,
and life-long crusader for progressive causes and the rights of the common
man.
Bryan's
involvement prompted Clarence Steward Darrow, America's foremost criminal
lawyer, to volunteer his services and to bring along internationally known
divorce court lawyer Dudley Field Malone. Meanwhile back in Dayton, law
school dean Dr. John R. Neal told Scopes, "whether you want me or
not, I'm going to be here" (Center
of the Storm: Memoirs of John T. Scopes 63).
Heading
up the prosecution for the state of Tennessee was District Attorney
General A. T. Stewart, who later became a U.S. senator. Some others
assisting Stewart were former Assistant Attorney General Ben G. McKenzie
(who had argued a case before the U. S. Supreme Court), Sue K. Hicks (the
original Boy named Sue, who later became a judge), and William Jennings
Bryan, Jr.
The
defense brought in famous scientists and theologians to testify: Dr.
Shailer Matthews, Dean of the Divinity School of the University of
Chicago; Dr. Fay Cooper Cole, professor of anthropology at the University
of Chicago; Dr. Kirtley F. Mather, chairman of the Department of Geology
of Harvard; Dr. Winterton C. Curtis, chairman of the Department of Zoology
of the University of Missouri; Dr. Herman Rosenwasser, rabbi linguist from
San Francisco; Dr. Maynard M. Metcalf, zoologist from Johns Hopkins,
Wilbur A. Nelson, state geologist of Tennessee; Dr. Jacob Lipman, Dean of
the College of Agriculture at Rutgers, Dr. Charles Hubbard Judd, Director
of the School of Education at the University of Chicago; and Dr. Horatio
Hackett Newman, Dean of the College of Science at the University of
Chicago. Their testimony was excluded by Judge John T. Raulston from being
an official part of the trial proceedings because under the Tennessee
statute regarding expert witnesses in a jury trial, it was irrelevant to
the single basic question of whether or not Scopes had broken the law. But
since the defense was permitted by the Judge to enter the statements of
the experts into the record in the absence of the jury for the sake of the
appellate court, the presence and testimony of such notables helped
underscore the importance of the trial.
The commentaries of
even more famous people further enhanced the fame and influence of the
trial: Felix Frankfurter, Norman Thomas, George Bernard Shaw, Edgar Lee
Masters, Albert Einstein, Dr. Howard A. Kelly, H. G. Wells, Billy Sunday,
Luther Burbank, and President Calvin Coolidge.
Because of all the Scopes Trial participants William Jennings Bryan
has suffered the most at the hands of biased journalistic stories,
superficial historical and biographical studies, twisted literary
productions, and even the thoughtless misinterpretations of fellow
Christians, an overview of Bryan's outlook and activity is a necessity for
a fairer and more balanced evaluation of his role in the evolution
controversy.
Bryan's first
published discussion of evolution was in his oration "The Prince of
Peace" (1904). In it he raises questions about the evolutionary
position, such as its basic starting assumption (Bryan begins by assuming
"a Designer back of the design"), its insufficient evidence
("you shall not connect me with your family tree [of monkeys] without
more evidence than has yet been produced"), its de-emphasis on the
mind and soul ("The mind is greater than the body and the soul is
greater than the mind, and I object to having man's pedigree traced on one
third of him only--and that the lowest third"), disagreements among
Darwinian scientists, and the fact that "Darwinian theory
represents man as reaching his present perfection by the operation of the
law of hate--the merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill off
the weak." Bryan comments, "I prefer to believe that love
rather than hatred is the law of development."
In his personal,
political, and religious endeavors up through about 1920, William Jennings
Bryan was involved with a long list of activities and programs: raising a
family; operating a farm and a law practice; running successfully for
Congress two times and unsuccessfully for president three times; leading
the Democratic Party for some fifteen years; serving as Woodrow Wilson's
Secretary of State and negotiating peace treaties with thirty nations;
editing a national newspaper; writing over fifteen books and numerous
articles and orations; lecturing some two hundred times a year on the
Chautauqua and other circuits as well as at colleges, civic meetings, and
various groups of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews; writing weekly Sunday
School lessons that were nationally syndicated and reprinted in 110
newspapers; maintaining friendships and a correspondence with scores of
famous and common people; and championing a host of progressive causes and
reforms (many of which were new, unpopular, and bitterly opposed by
Bryan's political enemies or rivals)--woman suffrage, a graduated income
tax, direct election of senators, prohibition of liquor, public disclosure
of newspaper ownership and the signing of editorials, workman's
compensation, minimum wage, eight-hour day, improved conditions for seamen
and railroad employees, prohibition of injunctions in labor disputes,
public regulation of political campaign contributions, Federal Reserve
Act, Federal Trade Commission, Federal Farm Loan Act, government
regulations of railroads and telegraph/ telephone, safety devices and pure
food processing, tariff reform, control of trusts, government control of
currency and banking, the initiative, the referendum, establishment of
departments of health and education and labor, promotion of public parks,
defense of rights of minorities, anti-imperialism, settling of
international differences through peaceful arbitration, support of
education (including African-American education), strengthening of Latin
American relations, helping to found the University of Miami, voting
reform, influence on the revision of state constitutions, reform to make
the Constitution more easily amendable, promotion of Florida as a good
place to live and work, raising an endowment fund for the University of
Florida, preservation of conservative theology and leadership at the
national level of the Presbyterian Church, support of the American YMCA,
and establishment of YMCA's across Canada.
About
1920, Bryan began to turn his attention increasingly to the evolution
controversy. Consistent with his lifelong concern with progressive
programs to meet the needs of the majority of the people, Bryan initiated
his crusade against evolution primarily because of its dangerous
ramifications commonly known as Social Darwinism. In The
Memoirs of William Jennings Bryan, Mary Baird Bryan refers to numerous
instances when students or their parents informed the Great Commoner
"that the teaching of evolution as a fact instead of a theory caused
the students to lose faith in the Bible . . . and later in other doctrines
which underlie the Christian religion" (479).
In "The Last Message," Bryan discusses The
Science of Power (1918) by Benjamin Kidd, who traced the root of
Darwinian struggle for existence to the branches of Nietzsche's
materialistic philosophy, which "denounced Christianity as the
`doctrine of the degenerate,' and democracy as `the refuge of
weaklings,"' and led to the poisonous fruit of German militarism in
World War I.
Focusing
primarily on the Darwinian explanation for the origin of man and disturbed
by the absence of sufficient proofs and the presence of dangerous
ramifications regarding countries with disputes, employers and employees
with disagreements, and family members with differences, Bryan embarked on
a course that had all the earmarks of being reasonable, fair, and
balanced.
Described
by his wife in the Memoirs as "a firm believer in the doctrine of complete
separation of Church and State," Bryan asserted "that all sects
should advance their religion by their own efforts and at their own
expense, unaided by the State...He argued that if the power of the
State could not be properly used to advance religion, it followed as a
matter of course that the power of the State must not be used to attack
religion." He believed that such a position was not "an
interference with freedom of conscience or freedom of speech, or even with
`academic' freedom" any more than prohibiting a Roman Catholic
teacher from teaching Catholicism in the public schools would be. Having
enunciated that "a theory which when taught as fact tended to destroy
belief in the truth of the Bible," his strategy was "first, to
establish the right of taxpayers to control what is taught in their
schools; second, to draw a line between the teaching of evolution as a
fact and teaching it as a theory; and third, to see that teachers proven
guilty of this offense should be given an opportunity to resign."
Finally
he was concerned "that care must be taken at this point that no
religious zeal should invade this sacred domain [of individual religious
belief] and become intolerance" (458-460, 485). On many occasions
from 1920 to the end of his life, Bryan reiterated this position,
carefully spelling it out that he was not against the teaching of
evolution as a hypothesis, that it deserved to be thoughtfully considered,
and that teachers should not be fined but reprimanded for teaching it as a
fact and for attacking the Bible.
Not
only has Bryan's position regarding evolution often been misconstrued, but
also his actions during the Scopes Trial have usually been misrepresented.
Unlike visiting defense attorneys Clarence Darrow and Dudley Field Malone,
who did what the ACLU had feared and preempted the vocal leadership of the
defense team, visiting prosecuting attorney William Jennings Bryan adhered
to the role of an out-of-state counsel and did not begin to take an active
vocal role until the fifth day of the eight-day trial.
His
remarks on this day are distinguished by clever and witty turns of
phrases, clear summary of previous points in the proceedings, vivid
illustrations, a favorite Bryan device of turning the tables on his
opponents and showing their inconsistency (he refers to Darrow's argument
in the Loeb and Leopold case, which was the reverse of his argument in the
Scopes case in that Darrow recognized the dangers of teaching students the
philosophy of Nietzsche, who was influenced by evolution), awareness of
problems with Darwinian theory that even other evolutionists reject (e.g.,
Darwin's idea of sexual selection), careful definitions of terms, and
subtle sarcasm colored by an anti-Republican Party gibe that apparently
was not grasped by Malone or Mencken about man being classified in an
indistinguishable way in Hunter's Civic Biology with "3499
other mammals. Including elephants?" (Trial Transcript 175)
Bryan's
performance on the seventh day, when he agreed to go on the witness stand
and be interrogated by Darrow if he could put Darrow, Malone, and Hays on
the stand has been the object of diverse evaluations. Bryan was not
legally obliged to take the stand, but he felt personally obligated to
bear witness for his Lord. Humanly speaking, it was unwise for Bryan to
take the risk of exposing himself to his opponents' questions since he was
not prepared but they were. They had even rehearsed handling rebuttal
responses to Bryan's answers by having Dr. Kirtly Mather, Harvard
geologist and Baptist Bible school teacher, answer as he supposed Bryan
might. In addition, they did not intend to go through with the agreement
to let Bryan question them on the stand the next day.
For
about two hours Darrow hammered away at his Christian counterpart with
questions ranging over some fifty topics. Many of them seemed repetitious
and were perhaps designed to wear down or trip up the Christian Crusader.
Some of Darrow's questions were impossible to answer: "Do you know
about how many people there were on this earth 3,000 years ago?"
Bryan responded, "You ought not to ask me a question when you don't
know the answer." Many seemed designed to tempt Bryan to hazard a
guess or to interpret Scripture. When Darrow asked, "Did you ever
discover where Cain got his wife?" Bryan replied, "No, sir; I
leave the agnostics to hunt for her." Had Bryan yielded to the
temptation to avoid appearing ignorant by suggesting that perhaps Cain
married his sister, Bryan would have opened himself to the accusation of
approving incest or interpreting Scripture loosely and then would have
been trapped into having to accept the defense's interpretation of Genesis
to accommodate evolution.
In
the lengthy interrogation, Bryan was careful to define terms, adhere to
known Biblical facts, and distinguish between literal and figurative
language in interpreting Scripture (thus making a clear and significant
distinction between the literal inspiration of all Scripture and the
literal interpretation of only the non-figurative part of it).
Bryan
refused to accept Darrow's paraphrase of Biblical passages but humorously
forced the self-proclaimed agnostic to read aloud the passages in
question. By turns Bryan was cautious ("The Bible doesn't say, so I
am not prepared to say."), clever (when asked if all creatures not on
the ark were destroyed, Bryan replied, "I think the fish may have
lived."), crafty (Bryan tried to include in his answers such
scientific statements as the Bible's reference to the circularity of the
earth), and considerate of scientific theories (Bryan refers to Einstein's
theory of relativity and acknowledges that though it would have been
"easy for the kind of God we believe
in to make the earth in six days," Bryan does not think that the
Genesis word for day "necessarily means a twenty-four-hour
day").
The
drift of questions and their somewhat circumscribed answers tended to
portray Bryan as a student of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures and other
religions but not of science or ancient civilizations (Trial Transcript
284-303). In spite of the advantages Darrow had in determining the flow of
questions, in approximately 70% of the questions and answers Bryan bested
Darrow, in about 20% Darrow outshone Bryan, and in about 10% it was a
draw. Probably the best rebuttal for the poison pen portraits of Bryan's
performance during the Scopes Trial by the press and versions of Inherit
the Wind is his "Last Message," which he wrote up in the
five days he lived after the trial, which surveys many of the points he
made during the trial, and which was originally designed to be the
summation of the case for the prosecution.
It
was undoubtedly good for the cause of true interpretations of the Bible
and of science that the Scopes Trial did not debate the claims of each. In
1925 there were no creationist Christians with doctoral degrees in science
to come to Bryan's aid, and scientific experts for the defense tended to
rely on such evidence for evolution as the Piltdown man and the Java man
and were forced to accept the textbook Scopes supposedly used (Hunter's Civic
Biology), which was blatantly racist and had other serious faults.
The
1955 play, Inherit the
Wind, has
continued to be in print, has gone through four Hollywood/television film
versions starring outstanding actors, has appeared on Broadway in two
different eras, has been a favorite of community and collegiate theaters,
and has been studied in schools and universities in such diverse classes
as English, history, science, social studies, and theater. So popular and
pervasive has been this play that it is very likely most people's
knowledge and opinions of the Scopes Trial have been fashioned by it.
Ironically, most readers or viewers do not note the authors' preface and
stage directions, for Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee clearly state "Inherit the Wind is not history" and make other
assertions--some subtle and deliberately veiled--to alert the audience to
view this play as a parabolic attack on the communistic investigations of
Senator McCarthy's committee. In fact, one of the writers of the 1960
screenplay version of Inherit, Nedrick
Young, was blacklisted by McCarthy, wrote under the pseudonym of
"Nathan E. Douglas," and saw his credits restored only as late
as 1997. In Inherit the Wind Lawrence and Lee omit crucial facts,
add imaginative fiction and print a twisted account of the historical
Scopes trial. In brief, Inherit
the Wind may be viewed as arresting theater, but it should not be
considered accurate history.
One
positive response to the negative impact of the journalistic coverage of
the Scopes Trial was the founding of over one hundred creationist
associations, which were a result to varying degrees of the trial: the
Religion and Science Association, the American Scientific Affiliation, the
Creation Research Society, the Bible-Science Association, the Institute
for Creation Research, and Answers in Genesis.
The
impact of the Scopes Trial is seen in the founding of William Jennings
Bryan Memorial University (now called Bryan College). During Mr. Bryan's
stay in Dayton at the time of the trial, local citizens and others
conceived of the idea of a Christian school named in Bryan's honor. They
invited Bryan to inspect various possible sites. Bryan's death five days
after successfully concluding the trial gave impetus to the idea, and
within two months there was an official organization. Ten of the original
nineteen incorporators had Scopes Trial connections.
In
1930, despite the Great Depression, when banks failed, companies
disbanded, and schools closed, Bryan University began classes in the now-abandoned
Rhea Central High School building and utilized Scopes's former science
lab. And as graduates of Bryan College fulfill the college mission
statement as "servants of Christ to make a difference in today's
world," the impact of William Jennings Bryan and the Scopes Trial
continues to be felt.
* Richard
M. Cornelius, Ph.D., “Introduction,”
excerpted with permission from Impact (Dayton, Tennessee:
Bryan College, 2000) pp. v-xiii.
Dr. Cornelius, retired chairman of the Bryan College English
department,
is a well-known Scopes Trial authority.
Copies of the paper bound Impact can be obtained at a modest
cost through Bryan College, PO Box 7000, Dayton, TN 37321-7000; phone
(423) 775-2041.
