7/30/13 Timeline: Remembering the Scopes Monkey Trial : NPR

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< Timeline: Remembering the Scopes
Monkey Trial
Jul y 05, 2005 12:00 AM
Copyright 2005 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For
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MICHELE NORRIS, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Michele
Norris.
Eighty years ago in July 1925, the mixture of religion, science and the
public school caught fire in a Tennessee town. Dayton, Tennessee,
was home to the Scopes trial, the Monkey Trial as it was called in
headlines across the country; arguing against human evolution,
William Jennings Bryan, and against the Bible story of creation,
Clarence Darrow. The trial ended after just a week, but questions
about teaching evolution are as divisive now as they were back then.
In this half-hour of the program, a look back at the Scopes trial and at
a community that's struggling with many of the same issues today.
NPR's Noah Adams visited Dayton, Tennessee, and we begin with his
report.
NOAH ADAMS reporting:
If you drive into Dayton and go to the Courthouse Square, the first
person you might talk with is O.W. Wooden(ph). The tailgate of his
truck is open, and he's selling pickled okra and jams and jellies. He
has a farm in the hills outside of town. Mr. Wooden, when he was
young, got to travel a bit in the service.
Mr. O.W. WOODEN (Resident): I was in Panama, see, and this
Panamanian lived there, you know, and he asked me what part of the
States I was from. And I told him I was from Tennessee, Dayton,
Tennessee. `Oh,' he said, `that's Monkey Town,' he said. Yeah. And I
reckon that's known all over the world everywhere I've been.
ADAMS: And the second question then, everywhere he's been, is:
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`Well, what do you think about the theory of evolution?'
Mr. WOODEN: They's trying to, you know, tell you that people come
from monkeys, you know, and all that stuff, and it couldn't be right.
Monkeys, to me, is like a chicken, and you know what a man is. It's just
one of them things, and people's people.
ADAMS: The quiet, leafy downtown streets of Dayton on a hot
summer morning. You can imagine the Model T Fords, women in long
white dresses, men in suits and straw hats and what the old brick
buildings used to be. We're here with Ed Larson. He's a law professor
at the University of Georgia, and the author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning
book called "Summer for the Gods." He revisited Dayton to show us
around.
Professor ED LARSON (University of Georgia): This is not an old
town. It was built in the late 1880s, 1890s when they put the rail lines
through. And they grew strawberries here because it was a good area
for strawberries. And then they put in them in the refrigerated rail cars,
and they'd hall them up north.
ADAMS: There was some industry and coal from the mines nearby,
but Dayton was missing out on the prosperity of the roaring '20s. The
civic leaders wanted excitement, tourism, new business. The idea to
hold an evolution trial in Dayton? It was just marketing.
Ms. ELOISE REED (Dayton Resident): All they wanted, those men,
when it was mentioned to them that we might get a little publicity--
Chattanooga, you know, papers would give us. Knoxville would, said
maybe even Nashville and Memphis. My Lord, we went all over the
world.
ADAMS: This is Eloise Reed. She's now 92 years old, so she was a
12-year-old girl that July in Dayton. Tennessee had a new law, first in
the nation: You couldn't teach the theory of human evolution in the
public schools. For the American Civil Liberties Union, newly formed
in New York, it was an issue of free speech, academic freedom. The
ACLU promised legal help anywhere in Tennessee if a schoolteacher
would step forward and test the law.
A Dayton businessman saw the item in the newspaper, and around a
drugstore table, over sodas, he and his friends wondered: `Why
couldn't we have the trial in our courtroom? And why not ask John
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Scopes?' Scopes was the young football coach, a bachelor. He didn't
teach biology, but he'd filled in for a couple of days, and the textbook,
the state-required textbook, featured human evolution. When Scopes
agreed to be arrested, the stage was set.
(Soundbite of train whistle)
Prof. LARSON: The actual train station would've been right over there.
ADAMS: The biggest deal ever at the Dayton depot? It was that July
when William Jennings Bryan came to town. Bryan was 65, three
times a Democratic nominee for president--never winning--a famous
orator, a defender of the church, a leading fundamentalist--and that
word was newly coined. He was traveling widely, warning against what
he called `the menace of Darwinism.'
Prof. LARSON: Bryan came up on the Royal Palm Limited, one of the
great trains of American history. The Royal Palm Limited usually just
sailed right through. And it stopped here, there was a band, the entire
town was out, there were banners. And William Jennings Bryan, the
Great Commoner, walked off wearing a pith helmet.
ADAMS: And facing Bryan, defending Scopes, would be Clarence
Darrow, 68 years old. He arrived by automobile and was welcomed
more quietly, but he was just as well known. Both lawyers would serve
without compensation. And as Ed Larson explains, they had reasons
to meet in a courtroom.
Prof. LARSON: At the time, Darrow was more than simply America's
most famous criminal defense lawyer; he was also a very popular
public speaker. And his favorite topic was anti-clericalism. One of his
biographers once called him the last of the village atheists on a
national scale.
(Soundbite of bell ringing; traffic)
ADAMS: The county courthouse is red brick, white-trim windows,
three stories high, as handsome now as it appears in pictures from
the summer of the Scopes trial. The tourists did not show up for the
event, but local people did. And The New York Times said, `They
came from mountain farms near Dayton; gaunt, tanned, toil-worn men
and women and shy children.' The Times story speaks of evangelists
and blind minstrels and food for sale and calico and notions.
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(Soundbite of song)
Unidentified Man #1: (Singing) Then Dayton came a man with his new
ideas so grand, and he said we came from monkeys long ago.
ADAMS: The saga of the Scopes trial was told in scores of songs,
stories in 2,000 newspapers, movie newsreels. WGN Radio brought
microphones from Chicago, the first time a trial was broadcast.
(Soundbite of music)
ADAMS: Clarence Darrow had out-of-town experts ready to define
Darwin's theory, but the judge agreed with the prosecution none of that
mattered. The legal question was narrow: Did John Scopes teach
human evolution? Darrow, perhaps overheated, certainly frustrated,
decided to call Bryan to the stand. He would be questioned on the
Bible. Against all advice from his colleagues, Bryan dared to accept.
This happened on the seventh day, and the judge had moved the
proceedings outside where it would be cooler and more people could
hear the expected closing arguments that day. Even as a 12-year-old,
Eloise Reed knew she was seeing something special.
Ms. REED: Well, we heard that day that they were going to be coming
down there to that platform, we got over there early and got us a front
seat under a big shade tree.
Prof. LARSON: Those three trees near the edge were there. This area
was wide open for putting up a podium. Now people, of course, could
see it from across the roads and the shops, Bryan up there sitting on
the stand and Darrow looking down at him and asking him a question
and pointing at him. And it's estimated there were about 2,000
people. They thought they'd come to see the closing arguments, but
what they got was Darrow's cross-examination of Bryan. Probably the
most famous scene in American legal history, and it didn't take place
in a courtroom.
ADAMS: Watching from the first row, Eloise Reed became concerned
about Mr. Bryan.
Ms. REED: It was a hot day. The temperature was over a hundred.
And he was perspiring, and he had his handkerchief out and he would
fan. But it got ugly.
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ADAMS: By `ugly,' Mrs. Reed means Darrow was insistent, wanting
Bryan to admit the Bible was open to interpretation. Bryan said at one
point, `I believe in creation, and if I am not able to explain it, I will
accept it.' Two famous old men arguing the law and the Bible. There
was anger and wit, laughter and logic and, sometimes on Bryan's part,
confusion.
Prof. LARSON: His own supporters, they thought he'd had a bad day,
that he didn't come off very good that day. But then they would explain,
`But look, he was being interrogated by Clarence Darrow. I mean, the
devil himself is not as good. And who could stand up?' You read this in
a lot of accounts. Given who was questioning him, they said Bryan did
a pretty good job.
ADAMS: The next day, the trial was over. John Scopes was convicted;
the judge fined him $100. And five days later, William Jennings Bryan
died, died in Dayton after church, after Sunday dinner, while taking a
nap.
(Soundbite of play)
Mr. TONY McHOUSTON(ph): (As Charles Darrow) Now did he show
you a book, which has been entitled "A Civic Biology," which I hold in
my hand?
Unidentified Man #2: Yes, sir.
ADAMS: Every July, the townspeople of Dayton put on a play about
the Scopes trial. The script is taken straight from the court record.
Their rehearsal space and their stage is the old courtroom. Air
conditioning is now a blessing.
(Soundbite of play; gavel)
Unidentified Man #3: We will adjourn till 9 AM tomorrow morning.
Mr. McHOUSTON: OK, we'll do the same scenes again Thursday.
ADAMS: Tony McHouston, who is a furniture designer at the La-Z-Boy
plant, plays the attorney Darrow. McHouston is also the director,
casting his neighbors: a professor, a family doctor, the owner of a bed
and breakfast.
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Mr. McHOUSTON: The toughest thing with this one is getting men.
Men are difficult to get into a fine arts situation in a small country town.
But...
ADAMS: The men of Dayton who volunteer for the cast look forward to
each summer's performance. They see it as a chance to tell the story
right.
(Soundbite of music)
ADAMS: In the 1950s, there was a long-running Broadway play that
seemingly was based on the trial of John Scopes. It was called "Inherit
the Wind." It made Dayton look bad and William Jennings Bryan
appear foolish. And besides that, the playwright said, it was really
about the threat of McCarthyism.
(Soundbite of music)
ADAMS: In 1960, "Inherit the Wind" became a movie, a starring role
for Spencer Tracy. The premiere was in Dayton at the drive-in outside
of town. And afterwards at a reception, Eloise Reed told the director,
Stanley Kramer, she thought the movie was terrible, and so did her
friends.
Ms. REED: It belittled our town. They showed all of the ugliness that
they could get into it to make it look like a little bitty borough or
something, you know. It was the way they portrayed us because we
didn't believe in the theory, or maybe not that, but we didn't want it
taught. We didn't care. We didn't give a hoot whether they taught it in
the school or not. That's all right. They couldn't make the people 'round
here believe it.
ADAMS: Our guide to Dayton, the historian Ed Larson, says perhaps
no one was converted by the Scopes trial, but because Bryan and
Darrow were such great speakers, both sides were energized.
Prof. LARSON: Their words, from this very place where we're standing
out here on this--under these trees, were so powerful that they
continue to resonate today. This issue is as live today in many parts of
America as it was back then. And it's part because they gave it voice
by their words.
ADAMS: Moments of history are often created from great purpose
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2013 NPR
and from happenstance. This one occurred 80 years ago this month in
the small town of Dayton in east Tennessee. Noah Adams, NPR
News.
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