Eighty-five years ago today — July 10, 1925 — was the first day of what may, in retrospect, be considered the trial of the 20th century.
The trial was State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes. For some, it was a sign that America was struggling to emerge from the Dark Ages. For others, it was a warning that Satan's forces of godlessness were gaining alarming strength in America.
The place was Dayton, Tennessee, seat of Rhea County in the eastern part of the state.
On trial was the young John T. Scopes, charged for violating the Butler Act, a Tennessee law enacted on March 21 of the same year, prohibiting the teaching of "any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible" and teaching instead "that man has descended from a lower order of animals". The crime was a misdemeanor, and the punishment was a fine of 100 to 500 dollars.
The case was something of a set-up, intended to challenge the validity of the law. Scopes was a Kentuckian who was new to Dayton, having been chosen to fill the shoes of a Rhea County High School biology teacher who had abruptly resigned. And although the standard biology textbook used in Dayton did indeed refer to the theory of evolution, Scopes was rather hazy on whether he had ever actually taught that section in class.
Nonetheless, between the desire of the ACLU for a test case they could take up to the higher courts, and the wish of the Dayton town fathers to put the town on the map (which they did, with a vengeance), there had to be a trial. Scopes was chosen as the guinea pig for the trial, with his own assent.
The whole thing began with the air of a media circus, as it was supposed to. The presiding judge, John T. Raulston, despite his evident sympathies for the prosecution, was mostly concerned with maximizing publicity for himself. (The trial, is in fact the only thing he is remembered for.) He is supposed to have suggested at one point holding the trial in an open-air tent, which would certainly have added to the circus atmosphere; in fact, the trial was held in the Rhea County Courthouse, in sweltering July heat.
The star performers were, of course, the attorneys for each side. Heading up the prosecution was A. Thomas Stewart, later a United States Senator. The lead defense attorney was Arthur Garfield Hays, a lawyer for the ACLU. But each side brought in a heavyweight lawyer from the outside to bring extra attention to the case.
On the prosecution's side was probably the most famous man ever to visit Dayton: William Jennings Bryan. Bryan had been the Democratic candidate for President in 1896 and 1900 (facing William McKinley both times) and in 1908 (facing William Howard Taft). Despite being a three-time loser, he attained high office in the administration of Woodrow Wilson, where he was Secretary of State from 1913 to 1915, resigning as America became increasingly involved in World War I. In 1925 he had been spending a lot of time on the speaking circuit, balancing his brand of politics with huckstering for Florida real estate.
Bryan was a curious mixture by modern standards: agrarian populist, anti-imperialist, anti-Wall Street, pro-women's suffrage, he probably single-handedly turned the Democratic Party from a party of the right to a party of the right to a party of the left; but at the same time he fought for Prohibition, backed fundamentalism, opposed evolution, and worst of all, winked at racism in the Democratic Party.
His contradictions can best be explained by the fact that he was a man not much given to intellectual rigor. He liked a good-sounding speech and no man in America delivered one better; but he wasn't overly concerned with the facts or the logic behind the speech. If it sounded good, it would be persuasive, and what more need he worry about? Bryan's positions made him the darling of the white, rural South and West, while urban America and the northeast were suspicious of him.
The defense failed to get anyone of the same stature. They had tried for the British author, H.G. Wells, who had dismissed them with incredulity; the suggestion of philosopher John Dewey went nowhere. They finally settled, somewhat uneasily, on celebrity lawyer Clarence Darrow.
If Bryan was the perfect fit for Dayton, Tennessee, Darrow was the polar opposite. Although a Democrat like Bryan (whom he had supported), Darrow came from a different wing of the party, associated with urban labor. Darrow had lived in Chicago for years; he had represented anarchists, socialists, and union workers; when that career fizzled out, he took on high-profile murder cases, usually with an eye to sparing his clients the death penalty, which he opposed. In 1925, he was best known for his defense, the previous year, of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two teenagers who had killed a younger boy for 'the hell of it'. Darrow argued for their insanity, and managed to get them life in prison.
Unlike the genial Bryan, Darrow had a brilliant intellect and a biting wit that sometimes got him into trouble. But most troubling for the Daytonites, he was an agnostic, a thing unheard of in Rhea County.
The first day of the trial, July 10, primarily involved selection of the jury pool. While it was pretty much impossible to find jurors who would be sympathetic to Scopes (as a defendant; he was well liked as a person) the defense hoped to find jurors who would at least be willing to listen to their case.