A Fascinating Stop in Dayton, TN, Location of the Celebrated “Scopes Monkey Trial” of 1925!
Another historical highlight was our stop in Dayton, Tennessee at the Rhea County Courthouse and Museum, location of the celebrated “Scopes Monkey Trial” of 1925. The trial began on July 10 of that year, and kicked off eleven days of what would become one of the most famous trials in U.S. history.
A quick primer on the case: John Thomas Scopes, a young high school science teacher, was accused of teaching evolution in violation of a Tennessee state law. The law, which had been passed in March, made it a misdemeanor punishable by fine to “teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”
With the help of a local businessman, Scopes conspired to get charged with this violation, and after his arrest, the men enlisted the aid of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to organize a defense. Hearing of this coordinated attack on Christian fundamentalism, William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic presidential candidate and a fundamentalist hero, volunteered to assist the prosecution. Soon after, the great attorney Clarence Darrow agreed to join the ACLU in the defense, and the stage was set.
Within a few days, hordes of spectators and reporters had descended on Dayton as preachers set up revival tents along the city’s main street. Inside the Courthouse, the defense suffered early setbacks when Judge John Raulston ruled against their attempt to prove the law unconstitutional, and then refused to end his practice of opening each day’s proceeding with prayer. Outside, Dayton took on a carnival-like atmosphere as an exhibit featuring two chimpanzees and a supposed “missing link” opened in town, and vendors sold Bibles, toy monkeys, hot dogs, and lemonade.
On July 21, in his closing speech, defense attorney Darrow asked the jury to return a verdict of guilty in order that the case might be appealed. Under Tennessee law, Bryan was thereby denied the opportunity to deliver the closing speech he had been preparing for weeks. After nine minutes of deliberation, the jury returned with a guilty verdict, and Raulston ordered Scopes to pay a fine of $100, the minimum the law allowed.
In 1927, the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the Monkey Trial verdict on a technicality but left the constitutional issues unresolved until 1968, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a similar Arkansas law on the grounds that it violated the First Amendment.
