Posted
on May 25, 2014
The
entire field of biology is organized around the ideas that plants,
animals, and other organisms on Earth share common ancestors, that
today's organisms gradually evolved from earlier, simpler forms, and
that creatures seem ideally fit for the environments in which they
live because of natural selection.
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| Credit: Barebente |
Those
three big ideas (common descent, gradual change, and natural
selection) are usually referred to with just one simple word:
evolution.
Back
in 1925, even though scientists only knew a fraction of the
bajillions of bits of evidence scientists have amassed today to back
up the theory of evolution through natural selection, this theory had
already been accepted by biologists and was being taught in colleges
and high schools.
However,
some of the people in Tennessee were not happy with the findings of
biologists. They didn't want to believe that humans and chimpanzees
and slugs and redwoods all shared ancestry. Nature doesn't care
whether we like the way things are or not—reality is what it is, no
matter how we feel about it—but some of those unhappy people
decided that, if they couldn't control what scientific experiments
were showing or what scientific papers were saying, they could at
least control what science teachers in Tennessee were teaching.
And
so lawmakers in Tennessee passed the Butler Act, which made it
against the law to teach human evolution in any state-funded school.
The
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) knew that that law was based on
religious motivations and was therefore unconstitutional. The
organization offered to defend anyone actually accused of breaking
the law.
Several
people in the small town on Dayton, Tennessee, decided that the
controversy of an arrest and trial about the Butler Act would give
their town some much-needed publicity. The school superintendent
pointed out that one law mandates that high school science teachers
must instruct their students on the science in the adopted textbook,
and that the adopted textbook teaches about evolution, and the Butler
Act mandates that high school science teachers must NOT teach about
evolution. So one law says that teachers must break another law.
The
group asked a young teacher named John T. Scopes to plead guilty to
teaching the theory of evolution. He had gone through a chart in the evolution chapter from the textbook with the
class.
Scopes agreed to stand trial. He urged several students to
testify against him and helped them to understand the kinds of things
they needed to say to get an indictment.
And
on this date in 1925, Scopes was indicted for teaching from the
chapter on evolution – from the textbook that had been adopted by
the state!
Scopes
was never put in jail, and he didn't even have to put up the money
for bail (a newspaper owner did that). Really, the entire trial was
sort of a set-up, motivated by a desire to bring publicity to the
town and to shine a light on a bad law.
The
townspeople who had made sure there would be a trial worked to get
the kind of lawyers who would ensure that the trial got publicity.
The school superintendent even wrote to British novelist H. G. Wells,
asking him to join the defense team! (Naturally, being a novelist
untrained in British law, let alone U.S. law, Wells said no thanks.)
The prosecution's law team did attract a famous lawyer, William
Jennings Bryan. Bryan had run for president several times and was a
former U.S. Secretary of State as well as a devout Christian.
Whether
because of the subject matter of the trial or because of the efforts
of the people of Dayton, the trial did get a lot of publicity.
Journalists from around the nation and even the world covered the
trial, and it was the first U.S. trial to be broadcast on national radio. The newspaper owner who had paid Scopes's bail used colorful phrases to stir up even more controversy and therefore
attract more attention. For example, he called the trial “Monkey
Trial” because Bryan criticized evolution for teaching
children that humans were descended from monkeys, and “[n]ot even from American monkeys, but from old world monkeys.”
It's
interesting that the defense attorneys, especially Clarence Darrow,
took a detour from the original strategy of pointing out that the
Butler Act violated the teacher's individual rights and academic
freedom, and that it was designed to benefit a particular religious
group and was therefore unconstitutional. In a way, Darrow put a
literal understanding of the Bible on trial. He encouraged people to
realize that the Bible's story of creation doesn't necessarily
conflict with evolution...that evolution could be the way that God
created the various species.
What
were the results of this famous trial?
The
judge directed the jury not to worry about whether or not the Butler
Act was a good law, but only to decide whether or not Scopes had
broken it.
Since
Scopes admitting to breaking the law, this made it easy for the jury
to find him guilty!
Scopes
was ordered to pay a $100 fine (which would be more than $1,000 when
adjusted for inflation), because the Butler Act specifically said
that that was the minimum fine for breaking the law.
In
the 1927 appeal in Tennessee's Supreme Court, the court shocked many
observers by finding the Butler Act to be constitutional but set
aside the guilty verdict because of a legal technicality: under the
state constitution, a Tennessee judge could not set a fine above
$50, so the jury should have set the $100 fine!
Decades
later, in 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court found in a separate but
related case that an Arkansas law similar to the Butler Act was
unconstitutional because its primary purpose is religious. But the
Butler Act had finally been repealed in 1967, the year before the
Supreme Court's decision.
You
can learn more about the Scopes trial by watching an old film,
Inherit the Wind (1960).
Also
on this date:
Plan
ahead:
Check
out my Pinterest boards for:
And
here are my Pinterest boards for:
Kentucky
used to be a part of Virginia; it was Kentucky County, Virginia. In
the 1780s and early 1790s, the residents petitioned to separate from
Virginia and become their own state. 
Parts
of Tennessee were once in the state of North Carolina, but they broke
off and formed the State of Franklin. However, the residents'
attempts to join the U.S. as the State of Franklin were turned down,
and the various break-away counties ended up rejoining North
Carolina. However, North Carolina pretty much said, “We don't want
you anymore!” because it ceded the area to the U.S. government. It
was then set up as the Southwest Territory. On this date in 1796,
Tennessee became the 16th state of the United States.
It
has more miles of navigable water than any other state, other than
Alaska. “Navigable” means that the water is deep, wide, and slow
enough for a vessel (a ship or boat) to pass. Some rivers have rocky
sections that are too shallow, too fast, too bumpy for even kayaks to
safely pass, and most vessels cannot safely traverse most waterfalls.
It
is also known for “American music,” with Nashville and
Memphis...Opryland and Dollywood...the Country Music Hall of Fame and
Museum, the Memphis Rock N' Soul Museum, and the Rockabilly Hall of
Fame...Ryman Auditorium (formerly Grand Ole Opry House) and Elvis
Presley's Graceland. Country music is huge in Nashville, and Memphis
is considered to be the birthplace or at least early shaper of blues,
rock and roll, and rockabilly.
