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Darwin: John Scopes, 'Monkey Trial' defendant

The year 1809 was remarkable for producing figures of great historical importance, including Lincoln, Chopin, Poe, Braille, Tennyson and many others. But no other figure produced as dramatic an effect on society as the English naturalist Charles Darwin. His groundbreaking theory of evolution had a major impact on religion, education, history and our conception of humankind. Now, 200 years after his birth and 150 years since the publication of The Origin of Species, the CBC Digital Archives looks at the history of Darwin, his controversial theory and the ways in which his thoughts still affect the world.

A high school biology class might have seemed like a place to teach Darwin's theory of evolution, but when John Scopes brought Darwin into his Tennessee classroom in 1925, he broke a state law against teaching evolution in schools and was taken to court. The Scopes "Monkey Trial", as it came to be known, polarized Americans and drew the eyes of the world to the small town of Dayton, Tenn. In this 1965 episode of Front Page Challenge, John Scopes returns to challenge the panel and reflect on his role in one the biggest legal battles in history.
• The state law that John Scopes flouted was the 1925 Butler Act, which forbade ''any theory that denies the story of the divine creation of man as taught in the Bible.'' The law was repealed in 1967 after a teacher complained it infringed on his right of free speech. • Scopes was found guilty, but the result was anticlimactic; he was fined $100 but never had to pay it. He appealed the case and his conviction was repealed by the state supreme court.

• John Thomas Scopes, the defendant in the famed Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, attended high school in Salem, Ill., the hometown of his 1925 prosecutor William Jennings Bryan.

• Writer, journalist and satirist H.L. Mencken went to Dayton, Tenn. to cover the Scopes trial for the Baltimore Sun and his scathing and satirical reportage ranks with his best-known work. He is credited with coining the terms "Monkey Trial" and "Bible Belt" and also provided biting commentary about Dayton and its residents. He called the town a "universal joke" and alternately branded its citizens "primates, hillbillies, yaps, yokels, morons and anthropoids."

• Mencken also saved some choice words for prosecutor William Jennings Bryan. "It is a tragedy, indeed," he wrote, "to begin life as a hero and to end it as a buffoon. But let no one, laughing at him, underestimate the magic that lies in his black, malignant eye, his frayed but still eloquent voice. He can shake and inflame these poor ignoramuses as no other man among us."

• Historian Kevin Tierney said that Mencken and defence attorney Clarence Darrow came to Dayton out of more than just professional interest. "(They) really wanted in some sense to re-fight the Civil War," Tierney wrote. "They were Northerners come down to tell the Southern yokels just how stupid they were."

• The story of the Scopes trial was loosely adapted in the 1955 stage play Inherit the Wind, which is a highly dramatized version of the real events. A less dramatic and far more accurate version of the story is played out each year in Dayton; using trial transcripts, local actors re-enact the trial.

Medium: Television
Program: Front Page Challenge
Broadcast Date: Oct. 5, 1965
Guest(s): John Scopes
Announcer: Bruce Rogers
Host: Fred Davis
Panellist: Pierre Berton, Betty Kennedy, Gordon Sinclair, Sidney Katz
Duration: 12:40

Last updated: February 8, 2012

Page consulted on June 17, 2013

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