Eighty-five years ago today -- July 20, 1925 -- was the seventh day of the trial of State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes.
This is the seventh in an ongoing series of diaries chronicling, day by day, the events of the Scopes trial 85 years ago. At issue: whether schoolteacher Scopes had violated the Butler Act, banning the teaching of evolution in Tennessee state-funded schools; but on a greater scale, the trial matched proponents of a Bible-based curriculum, claiming the literal truth of the Genesis stories of creation, against proponents of a science-based curriculum, including evolution. On the side of the prosecution, standing for the literal truth of the Bible, stood former Democratic Presidential candidate and Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan; on the side of the defense, standing for science and evolution, stood former Democratic activist, agnostic, and renowned attorney in the fields of labor and criminal law, Clarence Darrow.
This diary is incomplete owing to space limitations on its extreme length. In attempting to provide a complete record of the most vivid parts of the trial, it is difficult to justify leaving very much out. The remainder will be posted tomorrow, together with an account of the eighth day.
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