Posted
on July 17, 2015
Today
a festival begins in Dayton, Tennessee.
Today
there will be music, crafts, and vendors selling yummies for tummies
on the courthouse lawn. Tomorrow there will be a scavenger hunt, a
classic car show, a quilt show, a fine arts show, and crafts
demonstrations. Tomorrow night there will be a musical concert.
Sunday will be many fun, food, music, and crafts.
But
the thing that separates this festival from most other local
festivals is its focus on a very famous trial:
There
is a lecture and discussion on on “Evolution in the Scopes Era”
during the weekend. And then there is a play, held in a courtroom,
called “Front Page News.” And this play is a historically
accurate rendition of the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial, when famed
lawyers Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan did legal battle
about the teaching of evolution in biology classrooms.
The
trial was way back in 1925, and yet it still pertains to political,
philosophical, and legal battles today!
The
festival organizers point out that many people don't know the truth
about the Scopes Trial. Even though the court transcripts are readily
available, many people depend on the misreporting done by some
journalists at the time of the trial, or they assume that the
play/film Inherit the Wind is
true, but instead it is a fictionalized version of the Scopes
Trial that is not historically accurate and was never intended to be.
I
find it interesting to note that the play is put on in the very
courthouse in which the trial occurred!
To
read more about the Scopes trial, check out this earlier post.
Also
on this date:
Check
out my Pinterest boards for:
And
here are my Pinterest boards for:
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