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The Monkey Trial PLUS A Closer Look at Hollywood's Inherit the Wind |
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Click here to e-mail any comments, corrections, or suggestions. Thanks! |
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The
Movie: |
The
Facts: |
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The statements under this column are either contained in or strongly
implied by the popular play and movie Inherit the
Wind (1955 and 1960, respectively). Because of the influence of this play
and movie
(see over 35 video clips from the movie below), reading down just this
left-hand column will strike most people as a fairly accurate (or at
least familiar) synopsis of the famous Scopes “Monkey Trial.” |
The statements under this column contain information of a more factual
nature relating to the actual trial of the State of Tennessee v. John Thomas
Scopes (1925). To purchase a best-selling, word-for-word copy of the actual trial transcript in electronic (downloadable and searchable) form, click here. It's a very fun and educational read!! Included is the undelivered closing argument of William Jennings Bryan. |
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Once upon a time, the State of |
In 1925 the This fact bears repeating: The Tennessee legislature
did not outlaw the teaching of evolution but for one drop in
a very large bucket. To suggest, therefore, that entire fields of academic
study such as astronomy, botany, anatomy, geology, biology, etc., were
dealt a death blow in the Volunteer State is highly inaccurate. The statute was supported by a large majority of |
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The |
The intent of the Butler Act was not to favor Christianity over evolution
but to put the two prevailing theories on a level playing field of silence. The supporters of the Butler Act did not
advocate teaching the Bible in the public schools (which they believed to be
impermissible) and so they naturally felt powerless as a competing theory
(Darwinian evolution) could be freely taught in opposition to the silenced
story of creation contained in the book of Genesis. |
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Violation of the statute (the Butler Act) was punishable by fine and/or imprisonment. |
The Butler Act provided only for a fine from $100 to $500 (same as
bootlegging) and there was no provision in the Act for any jail time. |
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At the time that the anti-evolution statute was passed, the biology
textbook used in the |
The biology textbook used in The reason for this proposed truce of silence regarding mankind is discussed
below and provides an insight into the curious title of Hunter's text— |
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John Scopes (“Bertram Cates” in Inherit
the Wind), a young and earnest high school biology teacher in |
John Scopes, a high school football coach and mathematics
teacher who only substituted
for Dayton’s regular biology teacher, never
taught evolution to anybody. As he confided to acclaimed newspaper reporter,
William K. Hutchinson, “I didn’t violate the
law. . . . I never taught that evolution lesson. Those kids they put on the stand couldn’t remember what I taught them three months ago. They were coached by the lawyers.” Although not actually guilty of the alleged crime, Scopes cooperated in
a clever and friendly plan to test the constitutionality of the Butler
Act. The ACLU in Far from being arrested by hostile henchmen, Scopes
was arrested by his friend, Sue Hicks, the City Attorney of Dayton (and
the original “boy
named Sue” of Johnny Cash fame).
In his autobiography, Center
of the Storm (1960), John Scopes always put quotation marks
around the word “arrest” to highlight its voluntary character. The trial could not properly be called a witch hunt,
one trial historian notes, because “the accused [Scopes] and his defenders—the
‘witches’—were actually the hunters, stalking
the law with the intent of overturning it or at least making it unenforceable.”
de Sprague, The Great
Monkey Trial (1968), p. 490. |
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After his arrest, Scopes was put in jail where he was hit in the head by
a bottle thrown through the window of his cell, burned in effigy, threatened
with being lynched from a “sour apple tree,” and
generally made to fear for his life.
This fear was all the more regrettable because it was inspired by the
very townspeople Scopes had grown up
with all his life. Click here
for a video clip from ITW. |
In part because he was a quiet, likable person and in part, perhaps,
because he was the coach of their winning
high school football team, John Scopes was well-liked by the people of Dayton. Scopes was never jailed for a moment (he violated a
misdemeanor statute, recall,
not a felony), never
faced the prospect of jail, and was welcome in |
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Alone and afraid, Scopes was unrepresented by counsel up to the day
before his trial. He had written a
newspaper in |
From the very onset of the case which he himself helped instigate, John
Scopes unquestionably enjoyed the best legal defense team ever assembled
for a misdemeanor trial in the history of the In contrast, the Prosecution made do with local representation
of no particular distinction and no national reputation whatsoever.
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Bryan strenuously opposed the
teaching of evolution in the public schools. |
Bryan did not
oppose the teaching of evolution in public schools.
For a number of reasons noted below he did oppose teaching the evolution of mankind (one species) as scientific
fact and especially in the manner in which evolutionary theory was
practically being applied in his day. As Bryan wrote in the New York Times:
Specifically—and this is very important to
understanding both the Butler Act and the trial— The above teachings were favorably referred to as “eugenics”—a term invented by Darwin’s
cousin, Sir Francis Galton—and generally pertain to
the active management of the gene pool of the human species by the more
evolved over the less evolved. Statutes permitting sterilizations by force, laws
forbidding marriages between people of different races (miscegenation),
immigration quotas favoring Northern Europeans (Caucasians), and economic
policies benefiting the most successful capitalists, were all popular
policies advanced by elitists (university professors, industrialists, Planned
Parenthood, liberal ministers, etc.) who self-consciously and persuasively
invoked the “scientific” principles of Darwinism. Despite vocal opposition primarily from The majority
of the scientists called by the Defense to testify on behalf of John Scopes
in 1925, in fact, belonged to eugenic societies—organizations
now regarded as no less (and perhaps more)
reprehensible than the dreaded KKK. |
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No intellectual or other person of decency and goodwill could reasonably
oppose the teaching of evolution in the public schools. |
As noted above, |
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Christian fundamentalists like William Jennings |
The
Fundamentals, a collection of 12 books published in from 1905 to 1915, sets forth the
“fundamentals” of the Christian faith (such
as the Virgin Birth, the Deity of Christ, etc.). The
Fundamentals discuss the creation of the world but present several
theories as orthodox, including the view that creation took place over
millions of years and that the “days” of Genesis are actually epochs of
time. (See Gen. 2:4 where the word “day”
is used to mean an indefinite period of time.) Not all fundamentalists, therefore, held to a 6-day
creation and Bryan himself, as it turns out, did not believe in a literal
6-day creation (!). (See more
discussion of Bryan’s testimony during the
trial regarding his view of creation and the age of the earth below.) |
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Unlike most intellectuals, the people of rural |
Of course each person is entitled to his own views on such a proposition,
but of considerable relevance to the Scopes trial, at least, we have
the perspective of John Scopes himself as he relates in his autobiography,
Center
of the Storm: “I have often said that there is more intolerance
in higher education than in all the mountains of Tennessee.” (p.
276). |
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Once in town, |
John Scopes himself, to cite again the Defendant as especially relevant
to this trial, called Bryan was a three-time presidential candidate for
the Democratic Party (including being the youngest nominee of any party in US
history), a two-time congressman, a Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson,
a driving force behind four different constitutional amendments (income tax, woman’s suffrage, direct election of senators, and
prohibition) as well as an influential proponent for the establishment of the
federal department of health, education and welfare. Too left-leaning politically to be electable (so much for being a conservative!), Bryan was
a great supporter of trust busting, labor unions, higher taxes, government
schooling, federal regulations of every sort, and strict government
control (if not ownership) of many key industries.
He was also a principled pacifist and so he resigned from being
Secretary of State when President Wilson determined (prematurely, thought
All these political positions made Bryan is also still regarded
as one of the greatest (if not the greatest) orators in American history. On the famous Chautauqua speaking circuit,
he was second in popularity only to Helen Keller. Even up until his death at the age of 65,
his outdoor Sunday School lectures were attended each week by over 5,000
people and he was the editor of a newspaper as well as the author of
a popular syndicated column on Bible topics that appeared in over 100
papers each week. Although certainly no fan of In
personality he was forceful, energetic, and opinionated but genial, kindly,
generous, likable and charming. . . . Although an intellectual absolutist—a black and white thinker—he
showed a praiseworthy tolerance towards those who disagreed with him. (p. 36) |
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H.L. Mencken (“E.K. Hornbeck” in Inherit
the Wind), an editorialist from the |
Editorialist H.L. Mencken is one of the most fascinating and entertaining
characters connected with the Scopes trial.
A small-government, anti-FDR, anti-public-school libertarian
(not to be confused with the pro-government, pro-FDR, and pro-public-school
liberals of today), he was also intensely anti-Christian and
given to exaggeration and lies of the most ridiculous and often hilarious
sort. This ridiculousness and hilarity, however,
could be vicious and often was. Because
of both his libertarian politics and antipathy to religion, Mencken
genuinely hated the Christian populist It
was hard to believe, watching him at Mencken's obituary of Bryan
is even more scathing, but the popular reporter seems to have had his
own moral shortcomings. He believed,
for instance, that the Jews were “the most unpleasant race ever heard
of,” and that their unpleasantness was, in large part, responsible
for the mass resentment that put the Nazis in power (The
Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken
by Terry Teachout (2002), p. 268). Commenting upon the Mencken character in Inherit the Wind, Prof. Alan Dershowitz
of |
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Bryan had a poor understanding
of evolution. He even had the
annoying habit (whether out of sheer ignorance or on purpose is not
clear) of pronouncing “evolution” as “evil-ution.” |
Because he had taken the time to know both sides of the issues, Bryan had
a very good understanding of evolution and publicly debated in the pages
of the New York Times with
such evolutionary experts as the president of the American Museum of
Natural History, Henry
Fairfield Osborn. It may be impossible to gauge Bryan's understanding
of evolution compared to other participants at the Scopes trial but
it seems worth pointing out that several of the Defense attorneys and
the only scientist to give verbal testimony at the trial, Prof. Maynard
M. Metcalf, all mistake simple “change over time” (which is not disputed
by creationists or anyone else) with “evolution” of the sort
that can explain the emergence of new and increasingly complicated species
from the first single cell by means of natural processes only. The attorneys and scientists alike even site the development
of a fertilized egg into an adult animal as evidence of evolution (which
it emphatically is not because,
among other things, this development occurs within the life span of
the very same animal at issue and, secondly, the fertilized egg already
has 100% of the genetic information it needs to mature and thus no new
developmental evolution is occurring merely by virtue of this maturation
process). For enlightening quotations in this regard,
see pp. 116 (Malone), 136 (Dr. Metcalf), 156 (Hays), and 189 (Darrow)
of the trial transcript. Dr. Metcalf’s
single-sentence definition of evolution given from the stand (take a deep
breath!) contains the egg-to-adult misdirection common among evolutionists at
the trial: Evolution,
I think, means change; in the final analysis I think it means the change of
an organism from one character into a different character, and by character I
mean its structure, or its behavior, or its function, or its method of development from the egg or anything else—the
change of an organism from one set characteristic which characterizes it into
a different condition, characterized by a different set of characteristics
either structural or functional could be properly called, I think, evolution—to be the evolution of that organism; but the
term in general means the whole series of such changes which have taken place
during hundreds of millions of years which have produced from lowly
beginnings the nature of which is not by any means fully understood to
organisms of a much more complex character, whose structure and functions we
are still studying, because we haven’t begun to
learn what we need to know about them.
(p. 139-140 of the trial transcript) H.L. Mencken—this time presumably
not attempting to be humorous—called Dr. Metcalf’s testimony “one of the clearest, most succinct
and withal most eloquent presentations of the case for the evolutionists
that I have ever heard . . . . The
doctor was never at a loss for a word, and his ideas flowed freely and
smoothly.” Bryan knew that
evolution was not the development of a fertilized egg into an
adult. He knew that evolutionists could not account for the first living
cell in contradiction of the law of biogenesis. He knew that the fossil
record had yielded no convincing transitional forms and suspected that
many hominid fossils were probably fraudulent (which turned out to be
true). He also knew that the theory (rightly or wrongly) was being widely
used to denigrate the veracity of the Bible and justify practices that
later became synonymous with the worst evils of |
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Bryan was greeted
upon his arrival with a big parade led by belligerent, hard-faced Christians
singing what might be best described as “hate hymns.” Click here
for a video clip from ITW. The last-minute
arrival of Clarence Darrow (“Henry Drummond” in Inherit the Wind), the world-famous atheist and criminal defense
attorney, was ignored. Click
here
for a video clip from ITW. |
Bryan arrived to
much fanfare at the Far from acrimonious,
the trial began with excitement, expectation, and mutual good will.
Even the cynical and ever-irreverent Mencken had the following
backhanded (and thoroughly racist) “compliments” to give in his first
report from The town, I confess,
greatly surprised me. I expected
to find a squalid Southern village with darkies snoozing on the horse
blocks, pigs rooting under the houses, and the inhabitants full of hookworm
and malaria. What I found was
a country town full of charm and even beauty . . . . Nor is there any
evidence in the town of that poisonous spirit which usually shows itself
when Christian men gather to defend the great doctrines of their faith. I have heard absolutely no whisper that Scopes
is in the pay of the Jesuits, or that the whisky trust is backing him,
or that he is egged on by the Jews who manufacture lascivious moving
pictures. On the contrary, the
Evolutionists and the Anti-Evolutionists seem to be on the best of terms,
and it is hard in a group to distinguish one from another. |
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Notwithstanding
his dull intellect and simplistic fundamentalism, |
While Also, as was mentioned
above, Bryan and the Finally, it may
be worth mentioning that |
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Clarence Darrow’s goal in |
Taking these assertions
in reverse order, we have reason to question any claim of Christianity's
“reigning hegemony.” It is commonly
assumed—mistakenly—that the biology textbooks
in Taken at his word,
the objectives of Also taken at his
word, Darrow plainly stated, “We have the purpose of preventing bigots
and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the It might be most accurate to
say that if it were Darrow’s goal in |
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The religious community
of |
In 1925, only about
half of the citizens of |
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The people of |
The people of Darrow himself
said in open court: [A]nd so far as the people of Tennessee are concerned . . .
I don’t know as I was ever in a community
in my life where my religious ideas differed as widely from the great
mass as I have found them since I have been in Tennessee. Yet I came here a perfect stranger and I can
say what I have said before, that I have not found upon anybody’s part—any citizen here
in this town or outside—the slightest discourtesy. I have been treated better, kindlier and
more hospitably than I fancied would have been the case in the North,
and that is due largely to the ideas that southern people have and they
are, perhaps, more hospitable than we are up North. (pp. 225-6 of the trial
transcript) |
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Rather than being
a disciplined and abstemious Christian (as he presumably preached),
Bryan himself was a belching glutton.
Darrow, on the other hand, was moderate and simple in his appetites. Click here
for a video clip from ITW. |
Bryan had a large
appetite due, perhaps, to his being a diabetic. He was considered by observers of the trial,
however, to be in good health and, at about 230 lbs. (judging from photographs
taken at the trial), was certainly not obese. |
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Bryan was, for
all practical purposes, the lead attorney for the Prosecution at the
trial as well as a show-boater and a nonstop talker. Click here
for a video clip from ITW. |
Bryan was invited
to participate as an assistant
prosecutor, not the lead prosecutor for the State of In re-reading the
original trial transcript, one strongly suspects Darrow’s de facto “closing argument” was, by design, delivered at the
end of the second day of the trial, p.74 ff. In later writings he admitted
that denying Bryan the opportunity to deliver his closing argument was
an important part of the defense’s strategy. This strategy is also, of course, an implicit
recognition by Darrow that—for whatever reasons, noble or otherwise, creative or cowardly—he did not prefer to go head-to-head with the Great Commoner
in a battle of pure oratory on the legality and appropriateness of the
Butler Act. |
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In a gesture politically
motivated by the sleazy and groveling Mayor of Dayton, |
The title “Colonel”
was a courtesy title used for all attorneys in Tennessee just as the
title “General” was a courtesy title used for all attorneys general. At the Scopes trial, therefore, the title
of “Colonel” is used over 100 times.
The first six times occur when the Judge addresses Darrow as “Colonel”
(not Bryan), and the next five times occur when one of Bryan’s fellow assistant prosecutors also refers to Darrow
by the same title. All the attorneys
in the trial on both sides were referred to by these courtesy titles
as appropriate. But it gets even
better: Ironically, |
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At the end of the
first day in court, the Judge read an announcement from the bench advertising
a prayer meeting to be lead by Dayton’s anti-evolutionist minister, the fundamentalist
Rev. Jeremiah Brown. This announcement, understandably, was hotly
objected to by Darrow for its “commercial” content. Click here
for a video clip from ITW. |
There was no Reverend
Jeremiah Brown in What actually was objected to by Darrow at the trial
was not the announcement of a prayer meeting led by a fundamentalist
minister outside of court, but a prayer offered by the Court itself in opening each day’s session
much like the Supreme Court and Congress open each day’s
session with prayer today. Darrow
in his own defense noted that, by the Court's own admission, this practice
had not been consistently applied in the Judge’s
courtroom in the past and that, under the circumstances of the present
case, it was prejudicial to his client. The Judge finally
explained that he had opened court in prayer on numerous instances in
the past whenever a minister was available.
In deference to concerns raised by the Defense, however, he did
turn the selection of ministers
for the opening prayer over to the local Pastor’s
Association. This suggestion
was met with some amusement as it was assumed that the Association was
thoroughly fundamentalist and would select ministers accordingly. The next day and thereafter, however, names
presented for giving the opening prayer included a Rabbi as well as
prominent modernist (non-fundamentalist) ministers. The ACLU in Later in the trial, the proceedings were moved outside on the Courthouse lawn. There the Defense objected to a large sign posted on the Courthouse wall that read, “Read Your Bible!” Again the Prosecution asked what the problem was since the Defense was alleging that evolution is consistent with the bible. It was Bryan, however, who concluded that “if leaving that [sign] up there during the trial makes our brother to offend, I would take it down during the trial.” (p. 282 of the of the trial transcript) The Judge agreed with Bryan and the sign was removed. |
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At a dark and menacing
prayer meeting led by Jeremiah Brown, the Reverend called upon God to
strike down Scopes for his belief in evolution and prayed that his soul
be consigned to hell. When the
minister’s own daughter
tearfully objected to such a harsh condemnation of her fiancé (Scopes), he (the minister) fanatically
invoked the same wrath of God upon his daughter “though she be blood
of my blood and flesh of my flesh.”
Click here
for a video clip from ITW. |
There was no such
minister in There is also no
Christian doctrine which equates a belief in evolution with sin. |
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Bryan was disingenuous
about his faith in God and the Bible. He privately
believed that the common people simply needed “something to believe
in” and that, even if not exactly true, Christianity fills that purpose. Darrow, in contrast, thought that the truth,
however discomforting, was better than an opiate lie. Click here
for a video clip from ITW. |
Bryan believed
in God and the Bible and it has never been suggested (outside of Inherit the Wind) that this belief was
an accommodation to people to whom |
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Mencken commented
to Scopes during the trial that |
The description
of a man being able to “strut sitting down” was made by a newspaperman
about Bainbridge Colby, a prominent |
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Bryan called Scopes’s
fiancée, Rachel, as a surprise witness to the stand. She
was horrified for, in a moment of great vulnerability the evening before,
she had confided in |
Scopes had no fiancée
or even girlfriend in |
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When it came time
for the Defense to call its first witness—an
eminent scientist—the Prosecution objected,
vehemently opposing any expert testimony on the subject of evolution. But, as Darrow countered, how could the jury
fairly convict Scopes for teaching “evolution” if they had no real understanding
of the term? Bryan clearly feared
a confrontation with any viewpoint different from his own.
Click here
for a video clip from ITW. |
The testimony of
one scientist (Dr. Maynard M. Metcalf) was taken for nearly two hours
on the fourth day of the trial. On
the following day, a Motion was made by the Prosecution to deny further
scientific testimony as irrelevant.
Thereafter commenced a series of crucial speeches arguing in
favor of more scientific testimony (by the Defense) and, in opposition,
that scientific testimony was irrelevant to the simple factual question
of whether or not Scopes had taught evolution to his students. In his written
opinion, the Judge ruled against the admission of scientific testimony
as irrelevant to the basic charge that would go before the jury. This ruling, while damaging to the prospects
of the trial as a source of entertainment and even scientific instruction,
was nevertheless considered to be legally sound and was supported not
only on appeal but by such pro-Defense editorial voices as the New York Times and the Chattanooga Times. Interestingly,
upon hearing the Judge’s ruling, Arthur Hays,
an attorney for the Defense, then advanced the proposition that their
scientists be permitted to verbally testify on the stand without the jury present for the purposes of (a) assisting the appellate
court in its review of the Judge’s decision
to exclude scientific testimony and/or (b) possibly persuading the Judge
that, because evolution is so obviously true (it would be argued), he
had earlier made an error in declaring that the statute was
a proper exercise of Tennessee’s legislative
powers. Hays’s proposal had its obvious merits (the show could go on,
for one!) but it was Darrow
who then refused to allow the scientists to testify. Why? Because
if the scientists were to take the stand, then As a compromise
measure, the Judge permitted written
statements of the Defense’s twelve experts
to be read into the record in the hearing of the press. No contrary opinions to their written statements
or cross-examinations of the scientists from the Prosecution were permitted
under this arrangement. So, while it is
true that scientific experts did not verbally
present their views in open court at the Scopes trial (except for Dr.
Metcalf), lengthy written statements in support of evolution were entered
into the record. The reasons
driving this result from the standpoint of the Prosecution
had a perfectly sound basis in law and the rules of evidence: scientific
testimony on the latest evolutionary theories was irrelevant as to whether or not Scopes taught the evolution of mankind
in his classroom. The reasons
driving this result from the standpoint of the Defense is considerably more mysterious. Why wouldn’t Darrow
put his scientists on the stand and let their views get into the public
arena? He clearly had the opportunity
and pulled away on the pretext
of a technicality that, even assuming he was correct, he had raised
himself and could have easily tossed aside if he had wanted to! One good reason
for Darrow’s course of action may have been
the reluctance of the scientists
themselves to testify if they would then
be cross-examined by the Prosecution.
Why? First, the scientific
evidence supporting evolution sells considerably better among fellow
evolutionists than among Bible believers or even skeptics (creationists,
for example, were winning serious public debates against evolutionists
in New York, San Francisco, and London in 1925).
Second, many of the scientists were eugenicists (racists) and
probably preferred to keep this part of their Darwinist ideology out
of the papers. And third, although
the scientists called to (In light of the
above considerations, it is also worth noting that of the eleven published
names of scientists who were originally scheduled to testify in Dayton
as of June 26, 1925—just three weeks before the trial—most
never showed up.) The depths of Darrow’s strategies and motivations, of course, are impossible
to know. However, because the
lengthy written statements of all the scientists ultimately did go into the trial
transcript without contradiction or cross-examination, it appears that Darrow, Scopes,
and the theory of evolution got the better end of the bargain. Perhaps clever lawyering
is the best explanation for Darrow’s conduct,
but the charge of being afraid to put scientific evidence on the stand
cannot be fairly put at Bryan’s feet and it may well belong
at Darrow’s feet and/or his scientific witnesses’s feet instead. |
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In preventing the
testimony of scientific experts, Darrow argued that the Prosecution
was persecuting established truths as “incontrovertible as geometry.” Click here
for a video clip from ITW. |
As noted above,
the Court denied the testimony of scientific experts because it ruled
that the theory of evolution was not on trial (as the Defense contended),
but rather the simple matter of whether Scopes had violated a statute
recently passed by the On the issue of
whether or not evolution is as “incontrovertible as geometry,” it can
be fairly stated that the only scientific testimony offered in 1925
which has remained “incontrovertible” until today is the evolutionists'
perennial claim that “evolution is absolutely true and beyond any dispute.”
Everything else
about the theory has undergone dramatic re-datings,
reinterpretations, reformulations, and other significant shifts. |
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Enduring a gallery
of hooting Christians and having been unreasonably denied the opportunity
to put any expert witnesses
on the stand (the final straw), Darrow asked
to be removed from the case. When
the Judge asked why, Darrow swept his arm over the filled courtroom
and said he had over 200 reasons. Then,
looking to the bench, he added that he also had “one more reason” (meaning
the Judge himself) and stated his belief that the Court was engaged
in upholding a statute reminiscent of the sixteenth century when bigots
burned men who dared to bring “enlightenment and intelligence to the
human mind.” For the insinuation that the Judge was bigoted,
Darrow was cited for contempt on the spot. Click here
for a video clip from ITW. |
Darrow was cited
for contempt—not on the spot but the next
day, after the Judge had considered the matter overnight—because
of critical remarks made to the Judge in rapid succession to the effect
that: (1) the verdict in the
Scopes case was a foregone conclusion, (2) the Judge was not genuinely
interested in fairness as a part of the proceedings (“Has there been
any effort to ascertain the truth in this case?”), (3) the Defense could
only hope to get a fair hearing from another court, (4) courts are often
a “mockery,” (5) permitting the Prosecution to cross-examine any scientific
witnesses put on the stand by the Defense would, in effect, be a show
of prejudice by the Court against Scopes, and (6) the Defense’s
request to take the whole rest of the day to enable the scientists to
prepare their written remarks, when questioned by the Judge as to the
length of time requested, was obvious evidence of his further bias (p.
206 of the trial
transcript) Darrow later admitted
in court that |
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In citing Darrow
for contempt of court, the Judge set bond at $2,000 but then vindictively
increased it to $4,000 after a flippant remark by Darrow. The Judge also put Darrow in the custody of
the bailiff and was reluctant to accept any arrangement for the payment
of Darrow’s bond whereby Darrow could avoid spending the night
in jail. Click here
for a video clip from ITW. |
Bond was set for
Darrow at $5,000 (p. 212 of the trial
transcript). It was never raised, never collected,
and later forgiven (p. 226). There was never any discussion
by anyone about Darrow being put in the custody of the bailiff, not
being able to post a bond, or having to spend time in jail. There were no contemporary criticisms
of the Judge in any newspaper of which we are aware as to either his
demeanor or his actions relating to the citation of Darrow for contempt
of court. |
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The next day |
This much is true—Darrow’s calling of opposing counsel to take the stand
was a bold and surprising request, a “first” of its kind in jurisprudential
history. What is left out of
the Inherit the Wind account
is that Although never
explicitly agreeing to do so, Darrow
gave every impression that he and his co-counsel would be willing
to take the stand to explain their views (see trial
transcript, p. 284). This impression was
reinforced at various points during the cross-examination (see two instances
on p. 288 of the trial
transcript). It is not known whether Darrow
and his co-counsel would have actually taken the stand as Darrow implied
they would. The Judge decided
against this course of action (that is, permitting the attorneys to
cross-examine each other) at the beginning of the next day’s
session. |
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At the onset of
his cross-examination of “I am not the least interested in the pagan hypothesis
of that book,” shot back the answer. “Never read it?” Darrow asked again, only a little surprised. “And I never will,” |
Bryan was thoroughly
aware of the scientific arguments both for and against evolution and
had read Darwin’s Descent of Man in its entirety in 1905—20 years before the trial. Further, it was Bryan who introduced Darwin’s The Descent of Man at the trial, not Darrow. This introduction, when proposed, was objected
to by the Defense although the objection appears to have been made in
humor (see p. 177 of the trial
transcript). Incidentally, |
|
On the stand, the
literalist Bryan stated his view that “everything in the Bible should
be accepted exactly as it
is given there.” Further questioning
showed Bryan even willing to affirm that the sun
rotates around the earth
since the Bible literally“teaches” that it
was the sun which “stopped in the sky” during
a miraculously prolonged battle involving the Israelites back in Joshua’s day. Click
here
for a video clip from ITW. |
Of course On the more serious
topic of Biblical interpretation, Bryan’s complete statement on the stand omits the word “exactly”
and clearly shows that he was not the literalist straw man depicted
in Inherit the Wind: Darrow—Do you claim that everything in the Bible should be literally
interpreted? Bryan did testify
as to his belief that Jonah was literally swallowed by a great fish
and that the earth may have literally stopped rotating on its axis (giving
a viewer the impression of the sun “standing still”), as described by
Joshua. To summarize Bryan’s position, he did not believe in a wooden literalism.
He did, however, believe in miracles and did not, like the modernists,
seek ways to recast all Biblical miracles as literary metaphors or purely
naturalistic events. |
|
When asked by Darrow
about all the “begats” in the Bible (“Arphaxad begat Salah,” and so forth), |
This portion of
the movie is entirely invented. The
topic of sex never came up in the actual trial. Sex, moreover, is not the original
sin in the Bible and no one even semi-literate
in theology would concur with this schoolboy's assumption. Neither procreation nor marital sex is identified
as sinful in the Bible. |
|
Bryan testified in court that the
world was created in six 24-hour days but then went even farther.
Based on calculations made by Bishop Usher in the seventeenth
century, Bryan testified that the earth was created “exactly” in 4004
B.C. on October 23 at 9:00 a.m.—“a literal fact,” he added, “not my opinion.” When he was then asked how such a date and
time could be ascertained given that the sun was not yet created until
the fourth day, Darrow then drove
home the point: without a sun to tell time, “Isn’t it possible that [the first day] could have been 25 hours?” Bryan waffled and Mencken’s
eyes brightened as he saw the ingenious trap that Darrow then expertly
closed: “It could have been 30
hours, could have been a week, could have been a month, could have been
a year, could have been 100 years, or it could have been ten million years!” Click
here
for a video clip from ITW. |
Far from naming
a date (much less an hour of the
day!), Thus, the “day-age” (or “old
earth”) theory of Genesis was already
favored by Incidentally, it is often assumed
that the existence of our sun is required to properly demarcate the
length of time we call a “ |
|
As the cross-examination
progressed and |
There was no discussion
in the trial of sponges or their abilities or rights to think.
As for the audience switching alliances from Quite unlike the
dark and sinister tone to the trial depicted by Inherit the Wind, the actual trial
transcript (which noted the audience’s laughter and applause
when it occurred) seems to communicate a battle of intellect and wit
in an atmosphere of excitement and, for the most part, good-natured
humor. Darrow does, however,
inject a nasty tone into the trial on several occasions. Finally, the Butler Act did
not hinder Scopes’s freedom to think, only
his freedom as an employee
to teach a doctrine that was not hired to teach.
The Butler Act did not extend outside of the public schools,
a
|
|
Unable to answer
any of Darrow’s questions, |
Bryan never made
any such claim on the stand or anywhere else. |
|
Near the end of
the cross-examination, Darrow shouted, “Supposing Mr. [Scopes] had the
influence and the lung power to railroad through the State legislature
a law saying that only “Ridiculous! Ridiculous!” answered
|
As “ridiculous”
as such a proposition may have seemed 50+ years ago when Inherit the Wind was written, this turns out to be the most accurate
line of the movie: only Darwinism can be taught in the public schools
today. |
|
Reduced to a mindless
babbler, From a gallery
of stunned and embarrassed onlookers, Mrs. Bryan approached the bench
and, later, comforted her pathetic husband in her arms, rocking and
consoling him, “Baby, baby.” Click
here
for a video clip from ITW. |
Nothing remotely
approaching this scene ever happened at the actual Scopes trial. |
|
In court the next
day, Darrow, Mencken, and their client, Scopes, nervously awaited the
verdict of the jury. |
There was no nervous
awaiting for the jury’s
verdict. After the Darrow/Bryan cross-examination of the prior day,
the Court reversed its previously stated intentions and decided that
the testimony of Darrow, however,
had a different plan—one omitted in Inherit the Wind. After it was determined that there would be
no more witnesses, he cleverly asked the Court to find his client guilty—another “first” in jurisprudential history—thus taking away any opportunity for We have all been
here quite a while and I say it in perfectly good faith, we have no
witnesses to offer, no proof to offer on the issues that the Court has
laid down here, that Mr. Scopes did teach what the children said he
taught, that man descended from a lower order of animals—we
do not mean to contradict that, and I
think to save time we will ask the Court to bring in the jury and instruct
the jury to find the defendant guilty.
We make no objection to that and it will save a lot of time and
I think that should be done. (p. 306 of the trial
transcript) With this highly unorthodox
request having been advanced by the defendant’s
own attorneys, the Prosecution could hardly insist upon a closing argument
from its side only. Bryan, the
great orator, was thus finagled out of his closing argument and Darrow
proved to be clever if not cowardly. |
|
Scopes was convicted
by a reluctant jury wearied by their deliberations over the difficult
issues presented in the case. In his one statement made at
the conclusion of his trial, Scopes explained that he is not a public
speaker, “just a school teacher.” “Not any more, you ain’t!” shouted an angry Christian
woman. The clear implication is that
Scopes not only lost the trial, but that he lost his job for teaching
evolution. Click here
for a video clip from ITW. |
Boiled down to
the only factual issue presented by the case (whether or not Scopes
taught that mankind evolved from a lower order of animals), the jury
took one vote and returned a guilty verdict in a matter of nine minutes. Scopes was never
fired; he was extended an offer to continue on as a coach and teacher
in the fall at |
|
When the Judge,
under political pressure to go lightly on Scopes because of the bad
press the trial was generating, sentenced Scopes to pay a fine of only
$100, |
As is clear from
reading the trial
transcript, there was never an issue in anyone’s mind
that this case involved anything other than the minimum fine of $100
provided for in the Butler Act. Far from being one who would
insist on a larger fine, Before the Scopes trial even
began, |
|
After the verdict,
|
Once the Defense
waived their right to make a closing argument on behalf of their own client, Bryan did, in fact,
die in Far from defeated
and despairing, trial historian Prof. In the five days
following the trial, Bryan [edited] a 15,000 word speech he had hoped
to give at the trial before the proceedings were cut short, inspected
sites for a school the people of Dayton were interested in building,
traveled several hundred miles to deliver speeches in various cities
and speak to crowds totaling 50,000, was hit by a car, consulted with
doctors about his diabetic condition, and conferred with printers about
his last message. On Sunday, July 26, he drove from |
|
After learning
of Bryan’s death, Darrow explained to the
cynic Mencken that “there was much greatness in the man,” and “A giant
once lived in that body.” In contrast to
Darrow, Mencken refused to sentimentally mourn the death of the Bible-thumping
boob and surmised, “He died of a busted belly.” Click here
for a video clip from ITW. |
Upon first hearing
of Bryan’s death five days after the trial,
Darrow (not Mencken) surmised
“He died of a busted belly.” Mencken, sharing a similar sentiment, is said
to have remarked, “We killed the son-of-a-bitch.” |
|
In the final scene
of Inherit the Wind, the ACLU's
Clarence Darrow claps together the Bible and Darwin’s Origin of Species, figuratively embracing the best of both. He then leaves the courtroom striding forward
with a tolerant, informed, generous and optimistic eye to the future. Click here
for a video clip from ITW. |
Certainly today’s ACLU does
not see a place in the public school classrooms for both the Origin of Species and any serious critique
of or alternative to Darwinian theory. Perhaps even clasping
both books together as Darrow does is not the most fitting ending from
the standpoint of fairness and tolerance. Only where there is a separation of school and state can there be a peaceful accommodation of all viewpoints without coercing
any one citizen to subsidize the viewpoints of others. As Thomas Jefferson properly observed, “To
compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves
and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
(Click here
for a web site providing this separation-of-school-and-state
perspective.) As for optimism,
Darrow’s materialistic worldview pushed him
toward a bleak determinism, much like Darwin and Nietzsche, and he is
quoted at the end of his life to have said, “Life is like a ship on
the sea, tossed by every wave and by every wind; a ship headed for no
port and no harbor, with no rudder, no compass, no pilot; simply floating
for a time, then lost in the waves.” |
|
Apart from losing the trial in |
Largely due to the influence of Inherit the Wind, it seems an unquestioned
fact of history that Darrow crushed First, An analysis of
the unedited trial
transcript, however, eveals that Bryan’s answers were reasonable, intelligent, and often
very witty. Darrow, on the other
hand, lost his temper, insulted Second, as noted by Prof. Cornelius (cited earlier), after the trial there was
a quick and enthusiastic effort to found a new college in Third, after Fourth, the political movement to pass statutes
preventing the teaching that mankind evolved grew for several years after the trial in Fifth, Darrow was caught in a very fundamental
contradiction in court and it was he (rather than Bryan) who arguably
took the soundest drubbing of the two in During the trial Darrow asked
one of Scopes' students whether the teaching that he (the student) had
evolved from a single cell had “hurt” him any. The boy responded
"No" and the question got a few laughs. The question was put
into a more sober light by Bryan later in the trial when, in the context
of the Leopold and Loeb discussion, Bryan recalled Darrow's
question to the student and asked, “Why didn't he ask the boy's
mother?” (pp. 128 and 180 of the trial
transcript) Indeed, one wonders if Darrow ever asked Loeb if the doctrine
ever hurt him . . . or his murder victim. Sixth, the lead Prosecutor for the State of Tennessee (Tom Stewart) went on to run for U.S. Senate and won twice. It is unlikely that if he was widely perceived to have participated in a bungled trial of such size and importance that he would then go on to win two important state-wide elections. Seventh, according to trial historian (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Eighth, after the cross-examination, it was Darrow who chickened out from a head-to-head delivery of each sides' closing arguments to the jury, not Bryan. On the other hand,
in the sense that evolution is the only explanation for life on earth
that can be taught in public schools today, victory for the Defense
in the Scopes trial cannot be denied.
In fact, it |
|
The lower court
got it wrong in the Scopes case. When
cooler heads prevailed (we can assume), the Defense team won on appeal
and the |
The lower court
was upheld on appeal against
every legal attack levied against its rulings and against lengthy arguments
that the Butler Act was unconstitutional.
Only a technical matter pertaining to the Judge
setting the dollar amount of the
fine (rather than the jury)—a legal infirmity, ironically, that
was not pointed out and argued by the Defense
on appeal—caused the case to be remanded
to the lower court to try Scopes again (which they strongly recommended
against). Remanding a case is not the same as reversing it. |
|
The message of
Inherit the Wind is that it is best to
be fair, open-minded, and tolerant. |
If fairness, open-mindedness,
and tolerance of all viewpoints is the message
of Inherit the Wind, then
why are the film’s constant departures from
the facts of the actual trial slanted to reinforce a consistent bias: that Christianity is a dangerous, backward,
prudish, and intolerant belief system embraced by ignorant bigots? As Carol Iannone
writes in her article, “The Truth about Inherit the Wind,” The [movie] reveals a great deal about
a mentality that demands open-mindedness and excoriates dogmatism, only
to advance its own certainties more insistently. [Inherit
the Wind] promotes tolerance and intellectual integrity but stoops
to vilifying the opposition, falsifying reality, and distorting history
in the service of its agenda. (Click
here
for the complete article.) |
|
Inherit the Wind never claims to be true, so why do certain (thin-skinned) people bother
showing that it’s false in one little particular
or another? To make it clear
that the story is fictional, even the names of the participants are
changed! Moreover, the play version
of Inherit
the Wind clearly states in the prologue that “This is not
history.” |
But, (1) the movie
makes no similar disclaimer that what viewers are about to see is a
fictionalized account, (2) at least 115 precise, specific, and accurate
historical facts of the Scopes trial and its participants are seemlessly intertwined with the often-exactly-backward “fiction”
and thereby give the entire movie a highly misleading veneer of historically
reliability , and (3) advocates of the Inherit-the-Wind-is-just-fiction-so-stop-complaining
position can rarely separate those instances where Inherit the Wind is inaccurate so, in effect, ITW stands more or less as truth in the
minds of even these advocates. If one rents the
DVD
of Inherit the Wind and watches the theatrical trailer, the director
(Stanley Kramer) talks about refereeing a great fight between two giants
battling over issues of monumental significace.
This sort of introduction makes considerably more sense if he viewed
the movie as historical, of course, as opposed to fictional. Finally, many schools continue to show Inherit the Wind in history, social studies, and even science classes as a reference work for better understanding the 1920s, the fundamentalist movement, or the differences between science and religion. |
|
The play Inherit the Wind is less about the Scopes
“Monkey Trial” than it is about McCarthyism and opposing those people
who attempt to suppress the viewpoints of others. |
It is said that
the person who adapted the stage script by Lawrence and Lee for the
silver screen was a blacklisted communist (Nedrick
Young). In this case, the message of the movie would be that it is wrong
to criminalize minority viewpoints (although McCarthy did not criminalize
Communism, he only thought that communist spys
should not be employed in the State Department). This take on the
movie, however, if even true (as opposed to being a cover for a film
that rather straightforwardly denigrates Christians and their creationism),
could have been advanced without |
|
Academic freedom
is critically important and any state-sponsored restriction upon it
is unacceptable, especially if
religiously motivated. |
As a practical
matter, carefully ascertaining who should determine the content of public
education is important too. Many
people in 1925 believed that the those who pay the teachers’
salaries had both the political authority (through their state legislatures)
and moral responsibility as parents to ultimately control what their
children were taught. As for
the purist who insists on unfettered academic freedom, such a position
has the institutional disadvantage of employees effectively having more
authority than their employers. The Tennessee Act
did not infringe upon the larger principle of academic freedom insofar
as any teacher, group of teachers, student, or group of students could
still receive instruction in a private
school that desired to teach the evolution of mankind as a doctrinal distinctive. This, of course, is what is required of all
private, denominational schools (such as Jewish, Lutheran, and Catholic
schools) which also adhere to particular doctrinal distinctives. |
|
The Scopes trial
was the greatest trial in United States history. |
No quarrel with that one! Click here for a concurring opinion. |