Scopes Trial

Scopes Trial, (July 10–21, 1925, Dayton, Tennessee, U.S.), highly publicized trial (known as the “Monkey Trial”) of a Dayton, Tennessee, high-school teacher, John T. Scopes, charged with violating state law by teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. The trial’s proceedings helped to bring the scientific evidence for evolution into the public sphere while also stoking a national debate over the veracity of evolution that continues to the present day.

In March 1925 the Tennessee legislature had passed the Butler Act, which declared unlawful the teaching of any doctrine denying the divine creation of man as taught by the Bible. World attention focused on the trial proceedings, which promised and delivered confrontation between fundamentalist literal belief and liberal interpretation of the Scriptures. William Jennings Bryan led for the prosecution and Clarence Darrow for the defense.

Jury selection began on July 10, and opening statements, which included Darrow’s impassioned speech about the constitutionality of the Butler law and his claim that the law violated freedom of religion, began on July 13. Judge John Raulston ruled out any test of the law’s constitutionality or argument on the validity of evolutionary theory on the basis that Scopes, rather than the Butler law, was on trial. Raulston determined that expert testimony from scientists would be inadmissible.

The trial’s climax came on July 20, when Darrow called on Bryan to testify as an expert witness for the prosecution on the Bible. Raulston moved the trial to the courthouse lawn, citing the swell of spectators and stifling heat inside. Darrow’s cross-examination challenged Bryan on various biblical stories and the validity and practicality of their literal interpretation. Bryan responded by claiming that Darrow’s “only aim was to cast slurs on the Bible.” With Raulston limiting the trial to the single question of whether Scopes had taught evolution, which he admittedly had, Scopes was convicted and fined $100 on July 21. On appeal, the state Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the 1925 law but acquitted Scopes on the technicality that he had been fined excessively.

In the trial’s aftermath, Tennessee prevented the teaching of evolution in the classroom until the Butler Act’s repeal in 1967. Additionally, the state legislatures of Mississippi and Arkansas passed their own bans on the teaching of evolution in 1926 and 1928, respectively, which also lasted for several decades before being repealed.